Charles W. Chesnutt to Ida and Fannie Henderson, 13 October 1931
| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| alterations to base text (additions or deletions) | added or deleted text |
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added text | Deleted text Added text |
| position of added text (if not added inline) | [right margin] text added in right margin; [above line] text added above the line |
| proofreading mark | ‸ |
| page number, repeated letterhead, etc. | page number or repeated letterhead |
| supplied text | [supplied text] |
| archivist note | archivist note |
[1][?]
October 13,1931
Misses Ida and Fannie Henderson,
3314 Tullamore Road,
Cleveland Heights, Ohio.1
Dear Ladies:
I can only excuse my not having formally acknowledged receipt of the beautiful flowers which you sent me and which cheered my sick room so much by saying that I have been confined at home and practically in bed ever since they came. They were very beautiful and fragrant, and a fine index of the characters of their donors. I think they must have been of some value to me, for I am practically over my illness and am writing this at my office, which I am visiting today for the first time in five weeks.2
I certainly had a hectic summer; nine weeks of a delightful vacation,3 and then after a day or two of relaxation, nearly six weeks of illness. I had a doctor for a week or two to treat me for the stomachache. He gave me everything he could think of, and then suggested an examination at the Clinic, which I underwent -- and it was a very difficult and troublesom thing -- only to be advised by the surgeons there that there was nothing seriously the matter with me, nothing that was n't easily accounted for by my age. Of course, with this reassurance I immediately began to get better, and in two or three days I was over my illness. However, my strength did not return at once, and after experimenting with one or two tonics, my doctor has finally given me one which seems to have hit the spot. I took two doses and then I jumped into a cab and went to my office, where I have been practically all day. Whether I will be as smart tomorrow, or whether my wife will let me come, I don't know.
Speaking of my wife,4 she has been extremely faithful and devoted to me, has watched over me and taken care of me as if I were a baby or a small child, and I have assured her how much I appreciate her devotion.
Our old friend John P.5 has been at the house since I was ill. He is beginning to look his age, and that fall he had didn't do him any good.6 I guess it broke his Sunday School record, but I hope he will be able to resume it very soon.
[2]
Misses Henderson - page 2
I notice from the papers that the city's grand old man, Samuel Mather,7 is confined at home with heart trouble. I hope he survives, for in these times of depression and hardship we certainly need men of that caliber both in heart and pocket.
Again thanking you for the beautiful flowers, and hoping to see you before very long, believe me, with the thanks and regards of the whole family, I remain,
Faithfully yours, CWC:ESCorrespondent: Ida C. Henderson (1858–1953) and her younger sister Frances T. Henderson, “Fannie” (ca. 1864–1952) were former neighbors of the Chesnutts and had a similar history. Their parents, free Blacks from Richmond, Virginia, had migrated to Cleveland just before the Civil War with four children. Their father, Richard W. Henderson (1820–1892) was a barber like Susan Chesnutt's father. Fannie and three other siblings were born in Ohio, beginning wtih Powhatan Henderson (1859–1940), who became one of the first Black clerks to work for Cuyahoga County. By the mid-1890s, both parents had died, but Ida and Fannie lived together into their 90s; neither married; Ida worked as a milliner until at least 1920.
1. Ida and Fannie Henderson are listed in the 1930 U.S. Census at this Cleveland Heights address, a home they owned and valued at $11,200. From about 1895 to the 1920s, they had owned a home at 2228 E. 71st St. (formerly 768 Giddings Ave.), which was less than a block from 64 Brenton St., where the Chesnutt family lived from 1889 to 1904. [back]
2. Chesnutt became seriously ill and was home-bound from late August to at least mid-October of 1931; while he is vague about the nature of his illness, his letters thanking friends for flowers, gifts, and visits indicate that they had been very concerned. [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]
4. Susan Perry Chesnutt (1861–1940) was from a well-established Black family in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and worked as a teacher at Fayetteville's Howard School before marrying Chesnutt. They were married from 1878 until his death in 1932 and had four children: Ethel, Helen, Edwin, and Dorothy. Susan led an active life in Cleveland. [back]
5. John Patterson Green (1845-1940) was Chesnutt's cousin and an attorney, active Republican, and the first Black to be elected Cleveland's justice of the peace (1873–1882). He served in the Ohio House of Representatives (1881–1883; 1889–1891), the Senate (1891–1893), and in Washington D.C. as U.S. Postage Stamp Agent (1897–1906). Green was also the author of Recollections of the Inhabitants, Localities, Superstitions and Kuklux Outrages of the Carolinas (1880). [back]
6. See John Patterson Green's letter to Chesnutt of October 21, 1931, in which he refers to a serious car accident rather than a fall in August. [back]
7. Samuel Mather (1851–1931) was a wealthy White Cleveland businessman and philanthropist. He helped found and fund Cleveland's Community Chest to raise money for Cleveland's health and social service agencies; he and his wife Flora Stone Mather (1852–1909) supported many other Cleveland institutions. When he died on October 18, 1931, of heart failure after a brief illness that was widely covered in the local newspapers, some of his charitable bequests could not be paid because of the drop in stock values since 1929. [back]
