Edith E. Robinson to Charles W. Chesnutt, 24 June 1932
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[1]
THE WELLINGTON PUBLIC LIBRARY
(HERRICK MEMORIAL LIBRARY)1
EDITH E. ROBINSON, LIBRARIAN
WELLINGTON, OHIO2
My dear Mr. Chesnutt—
I have a list of the books of the Martha Kinney Cooper Ohioana Library in the Governor's Mansion, Columbus.3 I know of several books by Ohio writers that are not included in this list. Your name is omitted, and I do hope your books will be placed in the library mentioned above.
Perhaps many books have been added since the list was compiled, and your books may be there now.
[2]
With regards to Mrs. Chesnutt4 I am yours very truly
Edith E. Robinson
June 24 – 32
Correspondent: Edith E. Robinson (1876–1936) was the longest-serving librarian at Herrick Memorial Library (1904–1934), the public library in Wellington, Ohio. Her father and grandfather had been Black businessmen who owned barber shops and grocery stores in the town since before the Civil War. She seems to have known the Chesnutts personally.
1. Herrick Memorial Library is the public library in Wellington, Ohio, named for Myron T. Herrick (1854–1929), a Cleveland banker, Republican governor of Ohio (1904–1906) and ambassador to France (1912–1914). Herrick grew up in Wellington, financed the building that has housed the library since 1902, and left the library a large bequest at his death. [back]
2. Wellington, Ohio is a village in Lorain County, Ohio, nine miles from Oberlin, where Chesnutt lived as an infant (1858–1860). His father, Andrew Jackson Chesnutt (1833–1920), was arrested during the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue in 1858, when John Price, an enslaved man who had escaped to the area, was helped from Wellington to Canada by local abolitionists, in defiance of the Fugitive Slave Act. The warrant for Chesnutt's father was nullified because his name was misspelled (see Helen Chesnutt, Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1952], 3; Frances Richardson Keller, An American Crusade: The Life of Charles Waddell Chesnutt [Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1978], 55). Chesnutt used the village's name in several short stories for Midwestern towns and also for his fictional version of Wilmington, North Carolina. [back]
3. Martha Kinney Cooper (1874–1964) was the wife of Myers Y. Cooper (1873–1958), Republican governor of Ohio from 1929 to 1931. She founded the nonprofit Ohioana Library Association in 1929 and began assembling a collection of works by Ohio writers at the governor's mansion in Columbus, Ohio. By 1931, the Ohioana Library had over 600 donated volumes and was soliciting more via Ohio county committees and women's clubs. [back]
4. Susan Perry Chesnutt (1861–1940) was from a well-established Black family in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and worked as a teacher at Fayetteville's Howard School before marrying Chesnutt. They were married from 1878 until his death in 1932 and had four children: Ethel, Helen, Edwin, and Dorothy. Susan led an active life in Cleveland. [back]
