Charles W. Chesnutt to Mary Dickerson Donahey, 5 February 1924
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February 5, 1924
Mrs. William Donahey,
2331 Cleveland Avenue,
Chicago, Illinois.
Dear Mrs. Donahey:
I have yours of February 1st, in reference to taxes. The taxes for 1923 were a lien on the place at the time the land was transferred to you,1 and before making the dividend among the stockholders, the amount of the taxes for 1923 were retained, and I paid the bill for the first half of them in January.2 I have the money I think for the next payment which will be due in June and after that, beginning with December, 1924, the taxes will be assessed on the individual pieces of property, and you will have to pay yours at that time.
We have had some pretty cold weather here, down as low as eight or nine below zero, I have done my share of tending furnace, and I sympathize with Bill.3
I am glad you like your new home which I hope some time to see.4 I rejoice in the literary success which you have had, and am sure that Bill can do something as good as the "Teenie Weenies".5
The family all join me in love and best wishes to you and Bill. The girls are working hard.6 We have moved our office to 1656 Union Trust Building, corner of Euclid and Ninth Street, where we have a nice location, and hope to do a good business.7
Yours very truly, CWC:WCorrespondent: 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. See Chesnutt's inquiry about the property tax for the Chester Club Company of January 5, 1924, which would have been followed by a payment (not located). [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 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]
4. 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]
5. Chesnutt most likely refers here to Mary Donahey's Peter and Prue: The Tale of Two Runaways (Chicago and New York: Rand McNally & Co., 1924). Bill Donahey's "Teenie Weenie" cartoon, which was syndicated in newspapers and was the basis of several picture books, continued to be his most popular work. [back]
6. In 1922, two of Chesnutt's daughters, Helen and Dorothy, were living with their parents while pursuing their careers. After finishing college in 1904, Helen had returned to Cleveland to work as a secondary-school teacher, and she continued to live at the house until her mother's death in 1940. Dorothy lived with her parents as a student, probation officer, and eventually junior-high teacher, until her husband completed his medical degree in 1931. [back]
7. The Union Trust Building is a 21-story office building in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. When it was completed in 1924 by the Chicago-based firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White for the Union Trust Company, it was the second-largest office building in the world. Chesnutt and his partner Helen Moore (1881–1963) moved their offices shortly after its completion (several months before the official opening gala in May 1924) to Suite 1646 (not 1656, as Chesnutt's initial letters sometimes indicate), and operated out of this office until Chesnutt's death. [back]
