Charles W. Chesnutt to Mary Dickerson Donahey, 1 November 1921
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November 1, 1921.
Mrs. Mary D. Donahey,
5808 Winthrop Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois.
My dear Mrs. Donahey:–
Helen1 has shown me your letter of October 10th written from Freemont.2 I enclose a form of proxy in triplicate, which I think will cover any action which the Chester Cliffs Company3 may wish to take until the same is revoked. Please sign one form, have Bill4 sign one and keep the third in your files as a memorandum.
I have been trying hard to get Frank5 out there to look over the property with me. I have had tentative engagements with him now for three Sundays during the pleasant weather, but every Sunday morning or afternoon as the case may be Eula seems to develop some social engagement of which Frank was not aware and it was deferred.6 However, he is good natured about it and I hope to get him out there, and I don't want to antagonize him at present because he can do this thing easily with his consent and cooperation, whereas, if we did it by an action in court, which could be done, it would involve more or less expense, which we of course would like to save. I will keep after him and am in hopes I can work it out.7 If the worst comes to worst, and it becomes apparent that he does n't mean to do anything, we can take the other course. In the meantime, of course, we can adopt such regulations as we like as to the use of the grounds, as you suggest. As none of us will use the place before next summer anyway, there is no great immediate haste about the matter.
Helen showed me last night her presentation copy of Bill's and your beautiful edition of "Mother Goose".8 I have never seen this old classic put out in better shape. The illustrations are a joy and a delight especially the personal one at the beginning of the book. Helen and I have not quite figured out the significance of what the goose is saying, but we have no doubt it is something very pleasant.
With regards and best wishes to both of you.
Yours sincerely,Correspondent: 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. 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]
2. Mary Dickerson Donahey's letter from October 10, 1921, to Helen Chesnutt has not been located, and it is not clear which Freemont (or Fremont) is referenced. Clearly, the letter still concerned the matter of the Chester Cliffs Club property that she addressed in her September 2, 1921, letter to the Chesnutts. [back]
3. The Chester Cliffs Club or Company was a small stockholding corporation founded in September 1903 by Chesnutt and ten friends to purchase 11 acres of land near Chesterland, Ohio, 20 miles from Cleveland in northwestern Geauga County, where they spent summers away from the city. Three cottages were built, and in 1916 the Chesnutts purchased one of these. In 1921 Chesnutt, as the club president, took on the responsibility of reminding members of tax payments and calling the annual meeting. The corporation was never legally dissolved. [back]
4. 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]
5. 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]
6. 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]
7. In 1921, the Counts sold a plot of land to Mary Ellen Delahunte (1870–1951). They had not consulted the other members of the Chester Cliffs 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]
8. William Donahey illustrated a "Mother Goose" book of about 700 nursery rhymes compiled by Mary Dickerson Donahey in the style of his "Teenie Weenie" cartoons with the Chicago-based publisher Reilly and Lee Co. in 1921. It appeared under the titles The Teenie Weenie Man's Mother Goose and The Children's Mother Goose, with twelve full-color interleaf prints and many black and white illustrations. As a family friend, Donahey likely added the "personal one" for the Chesnutts by hand. [back]
