Arvine C. Wales Letter Regarding Van Camp v. Board of Education of the Incorporated Village of Logan

This letter from lawyer Arvine C. Wales advises George Harsh on the precedent set by Van Camp v Board of Education of the Incorporated Village of Logan. In the 1859 case, the Ohio Supreme Court denied admission of an African American child to a public school on the basis of race. In this letter, Wales outlines the case and gives his opinion that the decision was legally unsound and should not be used as a precedent for denying African American children admittance to other public schools in the state. The letter is 7 pages and measures 8" x 9.75" (20.32 x 24.77 cm). The Rotch-Wales Collection comprises several thousand items, including Quaker and abolitionist materials, household remedies and recipes, weather reports and machinery plans, and personal letters of Thomas and Charity Rotch and their family. It contains personal and business correspondence, diaries, documents, accounts, ledgers, and daybooks. A large portion of the collection consists of the personal and business correspondence, documents, and business papers of Arvine Wales I (1785-1854), who accompanied Rotch from Hartford to Ohio in 1811, worked for him, and carried on Rotch's business interests after his death. The papers of his son, Arvine C. Wales (1827-1882), a lawyer and civic leader in Massillon, are also part of the collection