John J. Wolf to Charles W. Chesnutt, 1 May 1922
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Board of
Deputy State Supervisors and Inspectors of Elections1
Cuyahoga County, Ohio
404 City Hall
Cleveland2
May 1, 1922
Mr. C. W. Chestnutt
C i t y .
My dear Sir:
I herewith enclose lease for lot on which is located one of our voting booths.
If you are still the owner of this lot, kindly sign the lease and return it to this office, whereupon remittance will be forwarded to you.3
Very truly yours, BOARD OF ELECTIONS John J. Wolf BookkeeperCorrespondent: John J. Wolf (1877–1960) served as clerk and accountant for the Board of Elections for Cuyahoga County from 1911 to 1946.
1. The Board of Deputy State Supervisors and Inspectors of Elections was a state office in Cleveland responsible for oversight of Cuyahoga County elections. In existence since 1886 (after Ohio's voter registration law took effect in 1885), it was always made up of two Republicans and two Democrats who then chose their staff. [back]
2. For readability, the remainder of the letterhead is not transcribed in the body of the letter but is included in this footnote as unformatted text. The letterhead can be seen in its entirety in the accompanying image of the letter. The text of the remainder of the letterhead is as follows: T. L. McDONOUGH CHIEF DEPUTY J. H. ORGILL H. A. BECKERMAN H. L. FRENCH A. J. HIRSTIUS CLERK S. A. McNEIL DEPUTY CLERK TELEPHONES - MAIN 3681 - CENTRAL 8200 [back]
3. Chesnutt owned an empty lot at 11900 and 11902 Superior Ave. in Cleveland, Ohio, by the early 1920s; the Union Trust Co. held the mortgage. By 1926 it had a single building with two storefronts, occupied by a series of small businesses; the structure no longer exists. Chesnutt also owned another rental property at 1267–1269 Lakeview Road, less than four hundred feet away. Superior Avenue is the main artery connecting the east and west sides of Cleveland's downtown; east of the city center it leads through a number of residential neighborhoods with storefronts along Superior. The area around 105th Street, as Chesnutt noted, housed "quite a few" of the seventy-five thousand African Americans that lived in the city by 1930 (see Chesnutt's essay "The Negro in Cleveland"). Chesnutt's properties were about a mile (1.5 kilometers or fifteen blocks) east of 105th Street. [back]
