Victor K. Chesnut to Charles W. Chesnutt, 23 July 1924
| Textual Feature | Appearance |
|---|---|
| alterations to base text (additions or deletions) | added or deleted text |
| passage deleted with a strikethrough mark | |
| passage deleted by overwritten added text | Deleted text Added text |
| position of added text (if not added inline) | [right margin] text added in right margin; [above line] text added above the line |
| proofreading mark | ‸ |
| page number, repeated letterhead, etc. | page number or repeated letterhead |
| supplied text | [supplied text] |
| archivist note | archivist note |
[1]
Hyattsville. Md.
July 23 1924
Mr Charles W. Chestnutt
9719 Lamont Ave N.E.
Cleveland, Ohio
Dear Sir:
Having seen your name repeatedly in various biographies together with mine & being much interested in the Chesnut family in America I write to ask if you will kindly furnish me with a brief sketch of your family.1 Are you at all connected with
[2]
the Senator Chesnut (of S.C) family of the South2 & do you know anything about a Chesnut who arrived at Port Royal S.C. in 1684?3
I am a descendent of a Chesnut family who in 1798 left western Va. & settled in the Scioto valley Ohio near Chilicothe & am a chemist by profession.
Hoping to hear from you soon I am
Yours truly V. K ChesnutCorrespondent: Victor King Chesnut (1867–1938), no relation to Charles Chesnutt, was a White chemist and botanist born in California to parents who had moved there from Ross, Ohio. His grandfather on the Chesnut side, Benjamin Chesnut or Chestnut (1797–1872) was born in Virginia, but by 1804 the family had migrated to Ross, in Scioto County, Ohio. Victor Chesnut specialized in poisonous plants and worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1894 until his retirement in 1933.
1. Chesnutt's entry in Who's Who in America, Vol. 13: 1924–1925, edited by Albert Nelson Marquis (Chicago: A.N. Marquis Co., 1924), 704, was immediately preceded by Victor K. Chesnut's (1867–1938). [back]
2. James Chesnut, Jr. (1815–1885) was a White Southern lawyer and Democratic politician who served briefly as U.S. Senator for South Carolina just before the Civil War (1858–1860), after serving in his state's House and Senate. The only son of James Chesnut, Sr. (1773–1866), a wealthy plantation owner and enslaver of over 400 people, James Jr. became a Confederate officer; after the war, he practiced law and founded the Conservative Party of South Carolina. His grandfather John Chesnut (1743–1818) had fought in the Revolutionary War. His wife was Mary Boykin Chesnutt (1823–1886), whose Civil War diary, first published in 1905, has become an important historical document. [back]
3. In 1684, a small group of Scottish Presbyterian Covenanters established a short-lived colony called Stewarts Town on Port Royal Island in the area that is now Beaufort, South Carolina. It was attacked and razed by rival Spanish settlers in 1686. [back]
