Mary Dickerson Donahey to Charles W. Chesnutt, 1 Febrary 1924
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MRS. WILLIAM DONAHEY
2331 CLEVELAND AVENUE
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Feb. I 1924
Dear Mr. Chesnutt,--
What about the taxes on my landed estate?1 Do I write and demand 'em, and to whom do I write? Do we owe you any on our share of the rest of the land? We are having a pretty cold winter to break Bill2 in to furnace tending, and he's not liking the job. But our house3 is all we expected it to be as a house, and is much admired by our friends. All well. I have sold another kid ?'s book, not a fairy tale, for older ones, and Bill is thinking at trying his hand at something besides Teenie Weenies for his next venture. We wonder how you all are, and hope the news from you is good. We couldn't be better, and zEmily4 is back from her first visit to Washington and New York, and delighted with both.
Correspondent: 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.
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. 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. [back]
3. The Donaheys moved within Chicago from 5808 Winthrop Ave. to 2331 (North) Cleveland Ave. in the Lincoln Park neighborhood sometime between late 1922 and early 1924. The new house was a single-family home built in 1883 and advertised for sale in August of 1922. [back]
4. Emily could not be identified and is not mentioned in other letters. The Donaheys did not have children, and no other family member by that name has been found. Contact the Charles W. Chesnutt Archive if you have further information. [back]
