When the Cather family left their country farm and moved into the small town of Red Cloud, Nebraska, in 1884, Mary Miner, the second Miner daughter, brought Willa a bottle of perfume, nestled in a red plush slipper. Thus began Cather's lifetime friendship with the Miner family, who were to become the models for the Harlings in My Ántonia.
Cather's friendship with Annie Sadilek, the model for Ántonia, blossomed when Annie was employed as the Miner family's "hired girl." It's possible, however, that the girls may have known each other earlier, when they both lived in the country. The road to Red Cloud passed near the Sadilek dugout, and one of Willa's favorite pastimes was visiting her immigrant neighbors. In fact, Cather has said that she "saw a good deal of [the original Ántonia] from the time I was eight until I was twelve."
The Sadileks left their village of Mzizovic, Bohemia, in October 1880. There was only one other Bohemian family on their ship, the rest were Polish, and they landed in America on November 5. Francis Sadilek had received letters from America that told of the country's beauty and prosperity, and he wanted his family to have a better life. What he ended up with was a 160-acre Nebraska farm with nothing on it but a sod house, a bed, and a four-lid stove.
The hard living conditions on the prairie, the dugouts, and the roads that were no more than a set of wagon tracks disillusioned Francis Sadilek. On February 15, he told his wife that he was going rabbit hunting. He took the shotgun he'd brought from the Old Country and went out. When he hadn't returned by 5:00 p.m., Mrs. Sadilek, Annie's older brother, and the man whom the Sadileks lived with went to search for him. They found him half-sitting in an old barn; he had shot himself in the head. He was buried on a corner of the Sadilek farm, at the crossroads, although his son Anton later moved the body to the Catholic section of the Red Cloud cemetery. Mrs. Sadilek and the two Sadilek boys are also buried there.
