Willa Sibert Cather was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including O Pioneers!, The Song of the Lark, and My Ántonia. In 1923, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours, a novel set during World War I.
The National Statuary Hall is a chamber in the United States Capitol devoted to sculptures of prominent Americans. The hall, also known as the Old Hall of the House, is a large, two-story, semicircular room with a second story gallery along the curved perimeter. It is located immediately south of the Rotunda. The meeting place of the U.S. House of Representatives for nearly 50 years (1807–1857), after a few years of disuse it was repurposed as a statuary hall in 1864; this is when the National Statuary Hall Collection was established. By 1933, the collection had outgrown this single room, and a number of statues are placed elsewhere within the Capitol.
The National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol is composed of statues donated by individual states to honor persons notable in their history. Limited to two statues per state, the collection was originally set up in the old Hall of the House of Representatives, which was then renamed National Statuary Hall. The expanding collection has since been spread throughout the Capitol and its Visitor's Center.
Julius Sterling Morton was a Nebraska newspaper editor and politician who served as President Grover Cleveland's secretary of agriculture. He was a prominent Bourbon Democrat, taking a conservative position on political, economic, and social issues, and opposing agrarianism. Among his most notable achievements was the founding of Arbor Day in 1872. In 1897 he started a weekly magazine entitled The Conservative.
"A Death in the Desert" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in The Scribner's in January 1903.
"A Wagner Matinee" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in Everybody's Magazine in February 1904. In 1906, it appeared in Cather's first published collection of short stories, The Troll Garden.
April Twilights is a 1903 collection of poems by Willa Cather. It was reedited by Cather in 1923 and 1933. The poems were first published in many literary reviews, often under pen names.
The Willa Cather House, also known as the Willa Cather Childhood Home, is a historic house museum at 241 North Cedar Street in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Built in 1878, it is the house where author Willa Cather (1873–1947) grew up. Cather's descriptions of frontier life in Nebraska were an important part of literary canon of the early 20th century. The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1971. The house is one of eight structures that make up the Willa Cather State Historic Site, which is owned by the Willa Cather Foundation.
The Willa Cather Birthplace, also known as the Rachel E. Boak House, is the site near Gore, Virginia, where the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Willa Cather was born in 1873. The log home was built in the early 19th century by her great-grandfather and has been enlarged twice. The building was previously the home of Rachel E. Boak, Cather's grandmother. Cather and her parents lived in the house only about a year before they moved to another home in Frederick County. The farmhouse was listed on the Virginia Landmarks Register (VLR) in 1976 and the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1978.
The Willa Cather Foundation is an American not-for-profit organization, headquartered in Red Cloud, Nebraska, dedicated to preserving the archives and settings associated with Willa Cather (1873–1947), a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and promoting the appreciation of her work. Established in 1955, the Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that promotes Willa Cather’s legacy through education, preservation, and the arts. Programs and services include regular guided historic site tours, conservation of the 612 acre Willa Cather Memorial Prairie, and organization of year-round cultural programs and exhibits at the restored Red Cloud Opera House.
Steven Weitzman is an American public artist and designer known for his figurative sculptures, murals, and aesthetic designs for highway and bridge infrastructure projects.
Edith Lewis was a magazine editor at McClure's Magazine, the managing editor of Every Week Magazine, and an advertising copywriter at J. Walter Thompson. Lewis was Willa Cather's domestic partner and was named executor of Cather's literary estate in Cather's will. After Cather's death, Lewis published a memoir of Cather in 1953 titled Willa Cather Living.
The National Statuary Hall Collection holds statues donated by each of the United States, portraying notable persons in the histories of the respective states. Displayed in the National Statuary Hall and other parts of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., the collection includes two statues from each state, except for Virginia which currently has one, making a total of 99.
Julius Sterling Morton, also known as J. Sterling Morton, is a 1937 bronze sculpture of Julius Sterling Morton by Rudulph Evans, installed in the United States Capitol Visitor Center, in Washington, D.C., as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection. It is one of two statues donated by the state of Nebraska. The sculpture was accepted into the collection by Congressman Karl Stefan of Nebraska on April 27, 1937.
The Elopement of Allen Poole is a short story by Willa Cather, first published in 1893 by The Hesperian while she was a student. The story itself deals with the character of Allen Poole, who is shot by an officer on the night of his elopement with his partner, Nell.
"The Best Years" is a short story by Willa Cather, first published after her death in the collection The Old Beauty and Others in 1948. It is her final work, and was intended as a gift to her brother, Roscoe Cather, who died as it was being written. Set in Nebraska and the northeastern United States, the story takes place over twenty years, tracing the response of Lesley Ferguesson's family to her death in a snowstorm.
Hard Punishments, also sometimes referred to as Cather's Avignon story, is the final, unpublished, and since lost novel by Willa Cather, almost entirely destroyed following her death in 1947. It is set in medieval Avignon.
The Burlington Depot in Red Cloud, Nebraska, is a restoration of the station used by the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad from 1897 to 1965. Now moved north from its original place near the tracks, the depot is one of the sites owned by the Willa Cather Foundation and includes a freight room, agent's office, waiting room, and sleeping quarters in its two stories. The presence of the depot and trains in Red Cloud greatly affected Willa Cather's life and literary work, and the depot is available for tours to anyone interested in learning more about the author. As part of the Willa Cather Thematic Group, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
St. Julian Falconieri Catholic Church is the first Roman Catholic church in Red Cloud, Nebraska, built in 1883. Abandoned by parishioners in 1903, the church was turned into a residence in 1906 after the completion of a new catholic church. Its conversion to a home altered much of the original structure, which was restored by the Willa Cather Foundation after its donation to them in 1967. The church has historical significance due to its connection to the famous author, Willa Cather, especially because it was where Annie Sadilek Pavelka was married and her illegitimate child, baptized. Both the Willa Cather Foundation and the state of Nebraska have owned the church and, in fact, was operated cooperatively from 1994 to 2018. However, as part of the Willa Cather State Historic Sites, St. Juliana was returned to the foundation in 2019. Today, the church is available for tours and, as part of the Willa Cather Thematic Group, listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1981.
