Henry Clay Tyson to Charles W. Chesnutt, 16 November 1922
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Washington, D. C.,
Nov. 16, 1922.
2124 K St NW
Mr. Chas. W. Chesnutt
I had an occassion to go to Howard University1 this morning and saw Ed. Williams.2 He and family are well. I asked him about you and your family he said your health is as usual and all others are very well. From this I gather your health is no worse. DO you think your trip this summer3 improved your health any? Is yourhealth generaly improving I hope that you can tell me that you are healthy and strong as ever.
I have very little trouble with my health. I frequently eat to much of those things I ought not to eat at all. If I am careful I have a very little troulble. I am retired from the government service and trying to build up a business on Real Estate line and am pleased with the business.
All are well. Write when you have time.
Yours truly H C TysonCorrespondent: Henry Clay Tyson (1853—1926), a Black civil servant and activist, was Chesnutt's brother-in-law, married to Susan Chesnutt's sister Jane Beze Perry (1859—1939). Orginally from Carthage, North Carolina, he graduated from the Fayetteville Normal School in 1879 and served as teacher and assistant principal under Chesnutt there (1881—1883). He moved to Washington, D. C., in 1883, worked as a civil servant and later as private secretary for Henry P. Cheatham (1857—1935), Black congressman from North Carolina (1889—1893). Tyson was also active in the Bethel Literary and Historical Association in D. C., where Chesnutt delivered several addresses between 1899 and 1913. The Tysons had three children, and the Chesnutts visited the family on at least two occasions (to give readings in 1899, and for a vacation in 1903); they also asked "Uncle Clay" for assistance in finding Helen a teaching position in D. C. in 1901 (Pioneer, 110, 196, 165).
1. A private university in Washington, D. C., Howard University was founded in 1867 by Oliver Otis Howard (1930–1909), the commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau from 1865 to 1874, as one of the first Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Chesnutt visited Howard University on his first trip to Washington in 1879 (The Journals of Charles W. Chesnutt, ed. Richard Brodhead [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993], 116). His son-in-law Edward C. Williams (1871–1929) was head librarian at Howard from 1916 to his death in 1929; his son-in-law John G. Slade (1890–1976) attended Howard Medical School, and his grandson Charles Waddell Chesnutt Williams (1909–1940) earned a B.A. and law degree from Howard. [back]
2. Edward Christopher Williams (1871–1929), the son of a Black father and a White mother of Irish descent, was from Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Western Reserve University's Adelbert College in 1892 and became its head librarian (1894–1909), also receiving an M.A. in library science at the New York Library School in 1899. He had known the Chesnutts at least since the 1890s and married Chesnutt's daughter Ethel in the fall of 1902; their son Charles (Charlie) was born in 1903. In 1909 the family moved to Washington, D. C., where Williams served as principal of M Street High School (1909–1916) and then as director of Howard University's library (1916–1929), where he also taught library science and foreign languages. He wrote a play performed at Howard University, as well as poetry and fiction for the Black literary magazine The Messenger in the 1920s. During the summer, Williams often worked at the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library at 135th Street, and in 1929 he enrolled in a Ph.D. program in library science at Columbia University in New York City, but in December of that year he died unexpectedly after a brief illness. [back]
3. Starting in 1922, the Chesnutts spent every summer until Chesnutt's death in Idlewild, in Lake County, Michigan, about 380 miles northwest of Cleveland. Idlewild was a popular lakeside resort for hundreds of Black families from the urban Midwest from the 1910s to the 1960s, when racism excluded them from many resort towns. In the spring of 1924, Chesnutt purchased a plot of land, where he had a summer home built in 1925. [back]
