Willa Cather - Early Life and Education

Early Life and Education

She was born Wilella Sibert Cather in 1873 on her maternal grandmother's farm in the Back Creek Valley near Winchester, Virginia (see Willa Cather Birthplace). Her father was Charles Fectigue Cather (d. 1928), whose family had lived on land in the valley for six generations. Her mother was Mary Virginia Boak (d. 1931), a former school teacher. Within a year of Cather's birth, the family moved to Willow Shade, a Greek Revival-style home on 130 acres given to them by her paternal grandparents.

The Cathers moved to Nebraska in 1883, joining Charles' parents, when Willa was nine years old. Her father tried his hand at farming for eighteen months; then he moved the family into the town of Red Cloud, where he opened a real estate and insurance business, and the children attended school for the first time. Cather's time in the western state, still on the frontier, was a deeply formative experience for her. She was intensely moved by the dramatic environment and weather, and the various cultures of the European-American, immigrant and Native American families in the area. Her town was named for the renowned Oglala Lakota chief.

Mary Cather had six more children after Willa: Roscoe, Douglass, Jessica, James, John, and Elsie. Cather was closest to her brothers, less close to her sisters whom, according to her biographer Hermione Lee, Cather "seems not to have liked very much."

Cather had planned to major in science at the University of Nebraska – she hoped to become a medical doctor. After her essay on Thomas Carlyle was published in the Nebraska State Journal during her freshman year, she became a regular contributor to the Journal, changed her major, and graduated in 1894 with a B.A. in English.