Emilie Skarabotta to Charles W. Chesnutt, 1 August 1931
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August 1, 1931
Dear Mr. Chesnutt:
Miss Moore1 is writing to you, too, while I am writing this, but I am sure you will forgive us if we both write the same thing.
I am doing the official answering of your letter of July 31st.2 Miss Moore said maybe you would like to write a letter of protest about the repaving improvement on Superior, since you can't be here and do it in person.3
I have n't been taking care of your rent -- Miss Kormos does it,4 and nobody has been in with any while she was away -- but Miss Moore said Miss Henderson paid $32.50 last month, her rent and $5.00 on account.5
Enclosed you have probably already discovered a check for $25.00, which Miss Moore is sending you for fishing tackle, bait, peanuts (if they have them up there), or whatever else your heart desires.6 Have a good time with it.
This morning I deposited $100.00 in your savings account, boosting the balance to a little over $900.00. Your checking account balance as of July 31st is $158.68, so we thought it was safe to put the other money in the savings account.
The weather in town is much cooler and more comfortable now, for which we certainly are thankful. It's lots easier to work in this kind of weather than it was when it was way up in the 90's.
Am sending you some notices from the bank which I thought might interest you.
Miss Moore is probably telling you about the status of the business, so I won't bore you (if that subject could bore you) by repeating it.
Regards to you all, and hope you're still enjoying yourselves.
Sincerely yours, Emilie SkarabottaCorrespondent: Emilie Skarabotta (1908–1990), the daughter of Hungarian immigrants, was a stenographer and notary public who worked for Chesnutt's and Helen Moore's stenography business in the early 1930s. She was eventually listed on the firm's letterhead.
1. Helen C. Moore (1881–1963) was a White shorthand reporter who began working with Chesnutt in 1918. Moore graduated from Cleveland Law College in 1925, earned her Bachelor of Laws from Baldwin-Wallace, and later, at the age of 58, obtained a Bachelor of Arts from Ohio State University. During the last years of Chesnutt's life, she managed their firm, Chesnutt & Moore, and upon his death in 1932, she founded her own firm, Helen Moore & Associates ("Memorial Resolutions," Journal of the Cleveland Bar Association 35 [1964]: 81–100). Most of their surviving correspondence consists of summer updates during periods when either she or Chesnutt were away from the office on their summer vacations. [back]
2. The letter in question has not been located. It would have been sent from Chesnutt's vacation home in Idlewild, Michigan, where he spent July and August, requesting and receiving regular updates from his business partner, Helen Moore, and his office staff. [back]
3. 11900 and 11902 Superior Ave. in Cleveland, Ohio, were a single building, which Chesnutt owned by the 1920s along with another rental property at 1267–1269 Lakeview Road (less than 400 feet away); the Union Trust Co. held the mortages. Superior Ave. 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 St., as Chesnutt noted, housed "quite a few" of the 75,000 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 km or 15 blocks) east of 105th St.. [back]
4. Margaret Kormos Shuri (1910–1979), the daughter of Czech immigrants, was a bookkeeper who worked for Chesnutt & Moore from 1930 to 1932; she married in 1937. [back]
5. Marie Henderson (1895–1985) and her mother Clara Henderson were White women who had come to Cleveland from Canton, Ohio, before 1910 and by 1921 were jointly renting an apartment from Chesnutt at 1269 Lakeview Road. In the 1930s, Marie was a salesclerk and worked for a time at Cleveland's leading department store, William Taylor & Son. She seems to have been responsible for the rent payments. In 1938, she married Wylie V. Lazear (1898–1959) and moved back to Canton. [back]
6. Starting in 1922, the Chesnutts spent every summer until Chesnutt's death in Idlewild, in Lake County, Michigan, about 380 miles northwest of Cleveland. Idlewild was a popular lakeside resort for hundreds of Black families from the urban Midwest from the 1910s to the 1960s, when racism excluded them from many resort towns. In the spring of 1924, Chesnutt purchased a plot of land, where he had a summer home built in 1925. [back]
