Charles W. Chesnutt to Victor K. Chesnut, 4 August 1924
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August 4, 1924
Mr. Victor K. Chesnut,
Hyattsville, Md.
My dear Mr. Chesnut,
I have your interesting letter of July 23rd. I have noticed your name in "Who's Who in America" more than once, and have often wondered whether I might be related closely enough to claim kin with so distinguished a gentleman.1
However, I suspect I must be content to remain in the ranks of those Americans, and their name is legion, whose origin is obscure. My people were not, to my knowledge, connected in any way with the South Carolina Chesnuts,2 who, by the way, spell their name, if I recall correctly, like your own, "Chesnut". My people for the 150 years of family history with which I am familiar, have spelled it as I do, "Chesnutt".
My ancestors, somewhat prior to 1775, lived in Sampson County, North Carolina,3 and my great-grandfather was at one time sheriff of that county. I thought at one time that you might be a descendant of a great-uncle of mine who migrated from North Carolina in the 1850's and settled in Iowa, but from what you say, this could not have been.4
I guess the best I can do is to feel that I bear a name which, so far as I know, no one has ever disgraced and which a few of us have made at least worthy of mention among those who have done something worth while.
With assurances of my sincere regard, and my appreciation of your courtesy in writing me, I am
Cordially yours, CWC:WCorrespondent: 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. Sampson County, North Carolina, is the county just west of Cumberland County, where Chesnutt lived from 1866 to 1882. Sampson County was founded in 1784 and had just over 6,000 residents in the first census of 1790, of whom 15 were principal householders named Chesnut. It is not clear which of these were Chesnutt's relatives, but his cousin John Patterson Green (1845–1940) refers to their common White ancestor from Sampson County as "a well-to-do farmer" and enslaver named "Chesnut (or Chestnutt);" see Green, Fact Stranger than Fiction (Cleveland: Riehl Printing Company, 1920), p. 6. [back]
4. Neither Chesnutt's great-grandfather who was a sheriff in Sampson County nor the great-uncle who settled to Iowa has been identified. Chesnutt did have a great-uncle who moved to Indiana, William Chesnutt (1812–1898). [back]
