Mary Dickerson Donahey to Charles W. Chesnutt and family, 2 September 1921
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WILLIAM DONANEY1
5808 WINTHROP AVENUE
CHICAGO
Sept. 2 1921
Dear Folks,--
I have been talking over Helen's2 and my conversation with Bill. He suggests that Mr. C. get the constitution from Frabk3 early and go over it to see what our chances of busting the corporation and dividing the property are.4 Then that we say nothing about selling to any one, have our meeting, get Frank to render his account in full as secretary and treasur pay him what we owe him, and then elect a new sec. treasurer--Helen maybe, protem--and proceed with the breaking up process at once. We will send you word of the day we expect to reach Cleveland and maybe you will arrange it so we can call at your house on the way out, and have a talk then, before the meeting takes place.5 Bill says when it comes down to a business proposition, he can fight a bit too, and this is a case where, as the other party has eliminated friendship--and we do not know Miss Delehunte6 at all--we can cease to consider things from any angl except that of business.
At present, it looks as if Eula7 had sold her property on the promise that we would all go on indefinitely paying most of the taxes and repairs on the property, so Miss D and her dog could have free range! I like dogs, but not well enough for that, and we can use our money to much better advantage than making it pleasant for this very disagreeable one. If we can't sell, we can at least, if the thing is divided, rent ! So glad to have seen Helen--wish I had seen you all.8 Will be anxious to hear about Dorothy's exams--9
MaryCorrespondent: Mary Augusta Dickerson Donahey (1876–1962) was a White journalist and author of children's books. She was originally from New York City and worked for the Cleveland Plain Dealer from 1898 to 1905. She married the cartoonist William Donahey (1883–1970) in 1905 and moved with him to Chicago, where she wrote children's and young adult books, cookbooks and newspaper columns. The couple befriended the Chesnutts in the early 1900s, when they were part of the Tresart Club and the Chester Cliffs Club. See Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952), 187–88.
1. William (Bill) Donahey (1883–1970) was a White writer and cartoonist from Westchester, Ohio. After graduating from the Cleveland School of Art in 1903, he briefly worked for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he met and married Mary Dickerson Donahey (1876–1962) in 1905 and became friends with the Chesnutts. After 1905, he worked for the Chicago Tribune and produced a widely syndicated comic strip, the "Teenie Weenies," which ran intermittently from 1914 until his death and became the basis of an advertising campaign for a canned-goods company in the 1920s, and for several books he co-wrote with his wife. [back]
2. Helen Maria Chesnutt (1880–1969) was Chesnutt's second child. She earned degrees from Smith College and Columbia University, taught Latin (including to Langston Hughes) at Cleveland's Central High School for more than four decades starting in 1904, co-authored a Latin textbook, The Road to Latin, in 1932, and served on the executive committee of the American Philological Association in 1920. She became her father's literary executor and first biographer. [back]
3. Albert Franklin (Frank) Counts (1881–1946), a White Cleveland lawyer with a 1906 law degree from Western Reserve University's law school, was a member and initially the secretary and treasurer of the Chester Cliffs Club when it was founded. In 1913, he married Eula (Eulalie) Gaskill Miller Counts (1869–1942). In 1930 Counts was given an 18-month prison sentence for embezzlement in a fraudulent divorce case; he was paroled in December of 1931. [back]
4. Since 1903, the Chesnutts had owned a plot of land near Chesterland in Geauga County, Ohio, about 20 miles east of Cleveland. With a group of friends, they had formed the Chester Cliffs Club or Company as a corporation to jointly purchase 11 acres of land on which to build summer cottages. Until about 1921, Chesnutt's family typically spent their summers at Chester Cliffs, before beginning to vacation in Idlewild, Michigan. [back]
5. Typically, the Chester Cliffs Club held its annual meeting each fall, called by Chesnutt, as its president, at some point convenient for the Donaheys, who had moved to Chicago in 1905. The 1921 stockholder's meeting took place at Chesnutt's office on October 6, 1921, and despite conflicts of the sale of part of their land, A. Frank Counts continued as treasurer; see Chesnutt's letter to Counts from November 1, 2021. [back]
6. Mary Ellen Delahunte (1870–1951) was a White woman who lived in Cleveland most of her life. In 1921, she purchased a plot of land from A. Frank Counts (1881–?) and his wife Eula (1869–1942), members of the Chester Cliffs Club. The Counts had not consulted the other members of the Club and gave Delahunte the impression that she was not responsible for property taxes or repairs relating to the property. This led to conflicts within the Club regarding Delahunte's unpaid tax bills. [back]
7. Eula (Eulalie) Gaskill Miller Counts (1869–1942) was a White woman who had family roots in Stark County, Ohio, where her father was a grain dealer. She attended Ohio Wesleyan University. Nothing is known about her first marriage, but a son from that marriage, Joseph Gaskill Miller, died young (1890-1908). Eula married A. Frank Counts (1881–1946) in 1913 and was active in a number of Women's clubs in Cleveland; the couple owned a cabin in the Chester Cliffs Community, near the Chesnutt family. Around 1930, the couple relocated to rural Virginia, possibly as a result of the scandal surrounding Frank's embezzlement and subsequent prison sentence, and owned a farm near Lightfoot, Virginia. [back]
8. Chesnutt and his daughter Helen had spent the month of August 1921 on a road trip, using Chicago as their starting and end point. Mary Donahey likely saw Helen at the end of this trip in Chicago, where Chesnutt's daughter Dorothy had also spent the summer taking graduate courses at the University of Chicago, before the family returned home from their first summer in Idlewild, Michigan. [back]
9. Dorothy Katherine Chesnutt Slade (1890–1954) was the youngest child of Charles and Susan Chesnutt. After attending the women's college at Western Reserve University from 1909 to 1913 and working as a probation officer for two years, she began teaching junior high school French and English at Willson Junior High School in Cleveland. She married John G. Slade (1890–1976) on March 29, 1924; they had one child, John C. Slade (1925–2011), known as Johnnie. [back]
