| 1858 |
Born Charles Waddell Chesnutt on June 20 in Cleveland, Ohio, the first child of Ann Maria (Sampson) Chesnutt and Andrew Jackson Chesnutt. (Both parents are from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and were among the 465 free blacks recorded as living there by the 1850 U.S. census. Mother, b. 1832, is the daughter of Chloe Sampson, of mixed race, and possibly Henry E. Sampson, a white slaveholder. Father, b. 1833, is the son of Anna M. Chesnutt, of mixed race, and probably Waddell Cade, a white landowner in Fayetteville. Parents left North Carolina in 1856 with small group of free blacks who traveled north by wagon train and were married in Cleveland on July 26, 1857.) Father works as driver- conductor for horse-car line. Soon after Chesnutt's birth, family moves to Oberlin, Ohio, where father works as a wheelwright's assistant.
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| 1860 |
Brother Lewis born January 16 in Oberlin. Family returns to Cleveland and father resumes working as a horse-car driver.
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| 1861 |
Brother Andrew born. Sister is born and dies in infancy. Father serves as teamster with the Union army.
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| 1866 |
Family moves to Fayetteville, where father opens grocery store on Gillespie Street with support from Waddell Cade. |
| 1866 |
Sisters Clara and Mary are born.
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| 1867 |
Chesnutt begins attending Howard School, public school for black children built with Freedmen's Bureau funds on land purchased by his father and six other African-American men.
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| 1868 |
Father is elected county justice of the peace and commissioner on the Republican ticket and serves until Democrats win elections in 1870.
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| 1871 |
Sister Lillian born. Mother dies, and her first cousin, Mary Ochiltree, moves in with family to care for younger children. (She will later marry Chesnutt's father, and they will have several children.)
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| 1872 |
Father's grocery store fails, and family moves to farm outside of Fayetteville. Chesnutt becomes pupil-teacher at Howard School under principal Robert Harris.
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| 1873 |
Becomes assistant in 1873 to Cicero Harris, principal of the Peabody School in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Robert Harris's brother. Spends summers teaching in rural schools in North and South Carolina. Begins writing journal (will keep it intermittently through 1882). Studies Latin, German, algebra, and history on his own, and reads Byron, Cowper, Burns, Dickens, and Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Starts learning shorthand and to play the organ. Sends money to his father to help support family.
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| 1877 |
Becomes assistant principal of the State Colored Normal School established at Fayetteville to train African-American schoolteachers.
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| 1878 |
Marries Susan W. Perry, age 19, a teacher at the Howard School and the daughter of Edwin Perry, proprietor of the barber shop in the Fayetteville Hotel, on June 6.
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| 1879 |
Daughter Ethel born in April. Visits Washington, D.C., during summer in unsuccessful attempt to find job as a stenographer.
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| 1880 |
Reads Albion Tourgée's novel A Fool's Errand. Becomes friends with J. W. Davis, minister of the Fayetteville A.M.E. Zion Church, and has extensive conversations with George Haigh, a white bookseller. Declines Republican nomination for town commissioner, possibly to avoid repercussions against the Normal School. Studies rhetoric and takes French and German lessons from Emil Neufeld, a German Jewish immigrant; reads Goethe's Faust. Continues to study stenography and records speech by Frederick Douglass for the Raleigh Sentinel in October. Becomes principal of the Normal School following the death of Robert Harris. Daughter Helen born in December. Family moves into its own home.
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| 1881 |
Becomes organist, choirmaster, and Sunday school super-intendent at Fayetteville A.M.E. Zion Church. Reads Molière's George Dandin, Thackeray's Vanity Fair, and Shakespeare. Studies Greek. Writes satiric verse "A Perplexed Nigger." Visits New York and Cleveland in summer of 1882.
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| 1883 |
Resigns as principal of the Normal School in May. Moves to New York City, where he works as a reporter for the Dow, Jones and Company news agency and writes column of Wall Street news for the New York Mail and Express. Son Edwin is born in Fayetteville in September. Leaves New York in November and moves to Cleveland, where he works in the accounting department of the Nickel Plate Railroad Company.
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| 1884 |
Rents house on Wilcutt Avenue in April and brings wife and children to Cleveland. (Family later moves to house on Ashland Avenue.)
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| 1885 |
Transfers to legal department of Nickel Plate Railroad, where he works as a stenographer. Begins studying law with company counsel Samuel Williamson, a former judge of the county common pleas court. Sells short story "Uncle Peter's House" to the S. S. McClure syndicate, and it is published in the Cleveland News and Herald in December 1885. (Will sell seven other stories to the McClure syndicate that appear in newspapers, 1886-88.)
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| 1886 |
Begins publishing stories in Family Fiction. Family moves to house on Florence Street.
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