Willa Cather

Willa Cather. Writer: O Pioneers!. Willa Cather was born in 1875 on a small farm close to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. She was the eldest of seven children born to Charles Cather, a deputy Sheriff and struggling entrepreneur, and Mary Virginia Boak Cather. The family's Irish ancestors had settled in Pennsylvania in the 1750s, and Willa cut her hair short and wore trousers to her fashionable mother's chagrin....