Willa Cather
Writer Willa Siebert Cather, despite supposedly having been born and having died outside the state, is quite possibly one of the most important and popular personalities associated with the State of Nebraska. Born on the seventh of December 1873 near Winchester, Virginia, Willa Cather moved to Catherton in Webster County, Nebraska with her parents and six younger siblings when she was ten years old. Her family stayed there for almost two years before they eventually moved to Red Cloud. It would be Red Cloud, Nebraska, that the name Willa Cather will be associated with for much of her career.
Cather went to college upon her own insistence, and while she was there she immersed herself in writing as a contributor to the Nebraska State Journal, and as a drama critic for the Lincoln Journal. After graduating from the University of Nebraska in 1895, she moved to Pennsylvania and worked for two major publications (Home Monthly and Daily Leader) before becoming a Latin and English teacher. She then decided to move to New York and was for six years a successful magazine editor for McLure’s Magazine. Despite her busy life, Cather made sure to further her education and by 1917, she had a doctorate of letters at the University of Nebraska, not to mention honorary degrees from Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and the Universities of California and Michigan.
Willa Cather also continued to write essays, short stories and poems, and in 1922, her novel “One of Ours” won a Pulitzer. Most of her stories were closely tied to Red Cloud, Nebraska, where she had grown up and spent a considerable amount of her childhood. Other examples of her famous Nebraska-based works include “O Pioneers!” and “My Antonia”. “My Antonia” is touted by some as the greatest American novel.
Cather died in the twenty-fourth of April 1947 in New York and was said to have been buried in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. Despite not having come home to Nebraska after her passing, Red Cloud, Nebraska’s Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial and Educational Foundation honors her every year on the first Saturday of May for her writings about Red Cloud, Nebraska. The foundation also works hard to preserve buildings, places and areas that are associated with both Willa Cather and her work.
To this day, much of Willa Siebert Cather’s work is considered a classic, and she remains one of the sources of Nebraska’s pride. In Red Cloud, Nebraska, the Willa Cather Historical Center and the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial stand, holding and guarding pieces of the renowned novelist’s life. From archive documents to her works and works inspired by her work, these show how important Cather had been to the history and culture of Nebraska.
