Charles W. Chesnutt to A. Frank Counts, 1 November 1921
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November 1, 1921.
Mr. A. Frank Counts,
911 Ulmer Building,
City.
My dear Frank:-
I enclose you herewith my check for $40.00, being assessment recently voted on two shares of the Chester Cliffs Company standing in my name;1 also check of Helen M. Chesnutt for $20.00, assessment on one share of said stock standing in her name.2
I have written to Mr.3 and Mrs. Donahey4 asking them to forward check to you for their assessment.5
Yours very truly,Correspondent: 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 Eula (Eulalie) Gaskill Miller Counts (1869–1942), who was also a shareholder in the Club. In 1930 Counts was given an 18-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.-->
1. Since 1903, the Chesnutts owned a plot of land near Chesterland in Geauga County, about 20 miles east of Cleveland. With a group of friends, they had formed the Chester Cliffs Club (or Company) as a corporation to jointly purchase 11 acres of land to build summer cottages. Until ca. 1921, Chesnutt's family typically spent their summers at Chester Cliffs (where they acquired their own cottage in 1916) before beginning to vacation in Idlewild, Michigan. [back]
2. Helen Maria Chesnutt (1880–1969) was Chesnutt's second child. She earned degrees from Smith College and Columbia University, taught Latin (including to Langston Hughes) at Cleveland's Central High School for more than four decades starting in 1904, co-authored a Latin textbook, The Road to Latin, in 1932, and served on the executive committee of the American Philological Association in 1920. She became her father's literary executor and first biographer. [back]
3. 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 had a cottage on their 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]
4. Mary Augusta Dickerson Donahey (1876–1962) was a White journalist and author of children's books. She was originally from 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. The Chester Cliffs Club had recently (on October 6, 1921) held a stockholders meeting; A. Frank Counts was the treasurer and secretary at this time. [back]
