Emilie Skarabotta to Charles W. Chesnutt, 5 August 1931
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August 5, 1931
Dear Mr. Chesnutt:
I should have written this letter day before yesterday but just did n't get around to it. Miss Chesnutt1 came in with $72.50 rent which she collected over the weekend, and which I put in your commercial account. She is taking perfect care of the rent, and was even going out to collect fo[absent] the sign privilege on your store!2
As I am writing this I am competing with Miss Kormos while she is putting together six copies of a nine-copy patent deposition.3 Does n't that sound good? We have n't had a job like that for a long time, except the Youngstown Sheet & Tube deps.4 We did n't get many pages yesterday, but expect to get quite a bit before the week is over.
Some of the exhibits offered yesterday were endorsed by you eighteen years ago -- you took so much room we have n't much left to put our decorations on. They offered the deposition of one of the witnesses taken then.
Miss Kormos is back from her vacation, and said she will write to you later. If you don't hear from us for a while, as usual you'll know no news is good news, and we' write as soon as it is over.
Regards from us all.
Sincerely yours,Correspondent: Emilie Skarabotta (1908–1990), the daughter of Hungarian immigrants, was a White stenographer and notary public who worked for Chesnutt and Helen Moore's stenography business in the early 1930s. Later, she was listed on the firm's letterhead.
1. Helen Maria Chesnutt (1880–1969) was Chesnutt's second child. She earned degrees from Smith College and Columbia University, taught Latin (including to Langston Hughes) at Cleveland's Central High School for more than four decades starting in 1904, co-authored a Latin textbook, The Road to Latin, in 1932, and served on the executive committee of the American Philological Association in 1920. She became her father's literary executor and first biographer. [back]
2. The collected rent was likely for Chesnutt's apartment buildings on Superior Avenue and Lakeview Road; the use fee for a sign was paid by an automotive dealership who advertised its business on Chesnutt's Superior Ave. building. See Chesnutt's 1932 correspondence with Samuel S. Rosenthal Inc.. [back]
3. 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]
4. Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company, based in Youngstown, Ohio, and founded in 1900 as several companies were consolidated, was a major U.S. steel manufacturer in the early 20th century, and in 1930 and 1931 involved in litigation about a proposed merger with Bethlehem Steel, which was opposed by prominent Cleveland businessmen and ultimately failed in October 1931. The referenced depositions may relate to this case. [back]
