William Donahey to Charles W. Chesnutt, 14 May 1922
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WILLIAM DONAHEY
5808 WINTHROP AVENUE
CHICAGO
May 14, 1922.
Dear Mr. Chesnutt-
I am sending to you a copy of a letter, which I have just sent to Frank Counts1 in answer to the proposal he made to me about selling.2
When you have read it please send it back to me for I want to have it on file.
It seems to me we are getting a dirty deal in this matter and I am in perfect sympathy with your suggestion of a suit. I'll let the whole blamed place3 rot before I give that fellow a chance to do anything that gets you or your family in bad. You can do anything you think best and I'll back you up in the matter.
I'm sorry I'm not on the ground to help you, but you can surely count on me for moral or financial support-in other words, I'm with you.
I expect to drive up into Wisconsin for a few days rest next week. Have been working mighty hard lately and I'm much in need of a little rest.
Please give my very best regards to your family.
Sincerely, Wm. Donahey
Chesnutt & MOORE
SHORTHAND REPORTERS
1106 WILLIAMSON BUILDING
CLEVELAND
CHAS. W. CHESNUTT
HELEN C. MOORE
(Copy)
William Donahey
5808 Winthrop Avenue
Chicago
May 14, 1922.
Dear Frank:
The reason I have n't answered your letter before this is due to the fact that I wanted to hear from Mr. Chesnutt and find out how he feels about the matter of my selling out. I know that he wanted to have the club divided up, so each party could have the deed to his or her property and I'm with him in that point.
I might be interested in selling out, but only on the condition that the club is broken up, or with the full consent of all the members.
I hope we can settle the matter of splitting up in a friendly and pleasant manner. I want to be as fair as I can to everybody concerned.
Sincerely yours,Correspondent: 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. The couple joined the Chester Cliffs Club and built a cottage on the land. After 1905, the couple moved to Chicago, where 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 as well as for several books he co-wrote with his wife.
1. 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 Eulalie (Eula) Gaskill Miller Counts (1869–1942), who was also a shareholder in the Club. In 1930 Counts was given an eighteen-month prison sentence for embezzlement in a fraudulent divorce case. Paroled in December of 1931, he joined his wife in rural Virginia, where they lived on a farm that was auctioned off after his death. [back]
2. See Donahey's letter to Chesnutt of May 1, 1922, about Counts's offer to buy the Donaheys' share in the Chester Cliffs Club, and Chesnutt's two-part response [back]
3. The Chester Cliffs Club or Company was a small stockholding corporation founded in September 1903 by Chesnutt and ten friends who were "stockholders," in order to purchase eleven acres of land in Chester Township near Chesterland, Ohio, and Scotland, Ohio, twenty miles from Cleveland. Summer cottages were built by three of the parties in order to spend their summers away from the city, and in 1916 the Chesnutts purchased one of these. Stockholder meetings were called every fall, even as eventually only three families seem to have remained: the Chesnutts, the Donaheys (who were living in Chicago after 1905), and the Counts. In 1921, Frank Counts (1881–1946), a Cleveland lawyer who was the longtime secretary and treasurer of the Club and his wife Eulalie (Eula) (1869–1942) sold a lot with a cottage to Mary Ellen Delahunte (1870–1951) without consulting the other members, causing conflicts about property tax and upkeep for years. Shortly afterwards, Chesnutt, as the club president, took on the responsibility of reminding members of tax payments and calling the annual meeting. Some of the property was transferred to individual owners in 1923, but the corporation was never legally dissolved. [back]
