Free Farm Girl by Karen Jones Gowen Page A

Bohemian community had dances every Saturday night that anyone could attend. I begged and begged my parents to take me to those dances, even just once.
    My dad always laughed and said, “Oh, that’s not for us.”
    My mother agreed with him, and besides she was happier staying home and working on one of her many projects than going out to a social event.
    Annie and I always planned to go to a movie and finally one time we got to go. If she saw someone in town she knew she’d tell me about them, and she liked to tell me stories about her family. I was quieter and never thought my family ever did anything exciting or went anywhere interesting. So I liked to hear what other people did.
    We talked about our schools and teachers. She was going to high school in Red Cloud, like most of the country students planned to do. I was embarrassed to say I’d be going all the way to Lincoln for high school. No one understood that, even when I explained about my two aunts living there.
    They would say, “What do you want to do that for?”
    Where my family lived was called the New Virginia community, because people came from Virginia and settled there. George Cather, Willa Cather’s uncle, was one of the first settlers, so it was called Catherton Township. My grandmother’s brother, Albert Wilson, had worked for George Cather in Virginia, and George came out to Nebraska to homestead. About this time, Albert disappeared from the Wilson farm, and no one knew where he’d gone. Later they found out that he had come out to Nebraska with George Cather. He was only fifteen at the time, his parents wouldn’t have let him go, so he just left without telling anyone. In Nebraska, he worked for George Cather for a few years, then he filed a claim, paid his five dollars, and lived on that claim. Albert Wilson lived there awhile, got married, then went back to Virginia to talk his brothers into coming out.
    Other families left Virginia for Nebraska as well, a Larrick family, and then Henry Williams came later. All these families and the Cathers made up the New Virginia community in Catherton Township.
    When I went back to visit my cousin in Winchester, Virginia in 1939, I attended a party given by Edward Marker’s daughter for 4-H. When each one went around giving his or her name, I heard so many familiar names from where we lived in Nebraska. There were Markers, Williams, Cathers, Wilsons and Larricks. I felt right at home.
    Willa’s father, Charles Cather, brought his family out to Nebraska later, after his brother George had come. The Charles Cathers spent the winter with the Cather parents who lived out in the New Virginia community. Willa was about ten then, she and my dad were the same age, born in 1873, and they were in the same class in the country school. Dad remembered Willa Cather being in his class for one year, when her family was living with the grandparents. Charles Cather tried farming with his dad, but that didn’t work out as he didn’t like farming, so he moved his family to Red Cloud.
    While they were living in the country, one of the Cathers, I believe it was Willa’s mother, got awfully sick. Mrs. Lottie Lambrecht walked over there, across the pasture about a mile and a half, to help take care of Mrs. Cather. Willa never forgot that service.
    Later, whenever she was back after a trip, she would come out to see Mrs. Lambrecht and give her a present. One thing Mrs. Lambrecht had was a pretty, fancy silk scarf with flowers on it.
    One day Mother and I went up to see Mrs. Lambrecht, and Willa had just left before we arrived. Mrs. Lambrecht showed us the scarf and other gifts she’d received from Miss Cather.
    No one around there thought highly of Willa Cather because she was so different, wearing men’s clothes. She was supposed to be a lady but she always acted like a man, at least in her earlier years. Aunt Elizabeth had been county superintendent in Red Cloud and knew Willa fairly well. I never heard her say anything,