Charles W. Chesnutt to G. R. Hanna, 23 October 1922
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October 23, 1922.
Mr. G. R. Hanna,
Care County Surveyor’s Office,
Chardon, Ohio.1
Dear Sir:
I am in receipt of your letter of October 14th, making correction in description of the land in Chester Township owned by the Chester Cliffs Company,2 and thank you.
I enclose my check for $20.00 in payment of your bill for further services in the survey and description of the land. I seem to have mislaid your bill for the $20.00. Please send me a receipted duplicate for the company’s files, and oblige.3
Yours very truly, CWC/FLCorrespondent: George Ralph Hanna (1891–1981) was a White civil engineer, a WWI veteran, and in the 1920s a surveyor for Geauga County, Ohio, where Chesnutt and his friends from the Chester Cliffs Club owned land.
1. Chardon, Ohio, is the county seat of Geauga County, which in 1920 had about fifteen thousand inhabitants. [back]
2. 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]
3. Neither the mentioned letter from surveyor G. R. Hanna nor a receipted duplicate of his bill survive, and it is not clear whether his correction to the land description was related to the ongoing disputes within the Chester Cliffs Club. Note that Chesnutt also wrote to the treasurer of Geauga County on the same date, to inquire about the taxes owed on the company's property. The correspondence was likely the result of the company's stockholder meeting that Chesnutt called each fall. [back]
