Charles W. Chesnutt to William Donahey, 6 September 1922
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September 6, 1922.
Mr. William Donahey,
5808 Winthrop Avenue,
Chicago, Ill.
Dear Bill:
Will you give me an idea of what date you will be in Cleveland this fall, so I can send out notice for the adjourned annual meeting?1 As we are contemplating some action which may not prove entirely agreeable to other stockholders,2 it is well enough to be quite formal about it, so I wish to give them ample notice of the meeting.3
My regard to Mrs. Donahey.4 We returned the first of the month from our summer vacation, which we enjoyed very much.5 All the family are well and would join me in regards if they knew I were writing.
Yours very truly, CWC/FLCorrespondent: 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. 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]
2. One goal of the 1922 meeting of the Chester Cliffs Club was to resolve the dispute over taxes and property upkeep that arose in connection with the sale of the land shares of A. Frank and Eula Counts to Mary Ellen Delahunte. [back]
3. Typically, the Chester Cliffs Club held its annual meeting each fall, called by Chesnutt as its president, with view to the convenience of 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, 1921. The October 6, 1922, meeting was also held at Chesnutt's office. [back]
4. Mary Augusta Dickerson Donahey (1876–1962) was a White journalist and author of children's books. She was originally from New Jersey, grew up in 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. [back]
5. August 1922 was the first summer month that Chesnutt's family spent at Idlewild, Michigan, although Chesnutt's wife, Susan, and son, Edwin, had summered at the Black resort in 1921 while Helen and her father took an extended road trip. See Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952), 289. [back]
