Charles W. Chesnutt to Edna M. Irvine, 11 December 1931
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December 11, 1931
Mrs. E. M. Irvine,
520 West 6th South,
Salt Lake City,
Utah.
Dear Madam:
I have your letter of December 2nd, which is quite interesting, but I am very sorry to say that I am unable to connect the William Albert Chesnut family with my own.1 Their story is quite a vivid one, and I have no doubt could be paralleled many times in the history of the settlement of the great West.
I hope that the lady may survive her misfortunes, and in time find some relatives.2
Please give her my regards and best wishes,
Yours very truly, CWC LKCorrespondent: Edna May Irvine (1878–1972) was a White woman whose family migrated from North Carolina to rural Utah after the Civil War. The family moved to Salt Lake City in 1890, where Edna May joined the Mormon Church in 1895 and became a full-time schoolteacher and taught Sunday school. She married John Irvine in 1909; the couple had five children. Edna May Irvine researched primarily her own family's genealogy, but seems to have helped others, as in the case of the descendant of the Chestnut family.
1. The few traces of the family of William Albert Chestnut (not Chesnut, 1812–1852) mostly align with Edna M. Irvine's account, which won second prize in a 1931 story contest on the occasion of the Covered Wagon Days. See the Deseret News [Salt Lake City, Utah] (July 22, 1931): 5. However, the murder of William and his wife Johanna Nancy (1816–1852) as they were traveling West from Missouri with their children occurred not in 1849, as Irvine thought, but in 1852. The three children, Ann Catherine, Sarah Mary, and William Alfred, were found by a Mormon pioneer group on their way West, led by Samuel Jefferson Adair (1806–1889). The children were raised by his and other Mormon families in Utah. [back]
2. The reference is to Cora Maud Malan Hileman (1880–1934), who was the daughter of Sarah Mary Chestnut (1845–1886) and her third husband, Stephen Malan. Cora Hileman had recently become a widow (April 1931) when Edna M. Irvine was making inquiries on her behalf. Sarah's older sister, Ann Catherine (1844–1863) had died very young giving birth to a daughter, Jemima Ann; Jemima Ann died in 1919. [back]
