A Business Letter from E.B. Sadler to J.J. Dauch

On August 2, 1882, Sandusky attorney E.B. Sadler wrote a letter to J.J. Dauch, regarding a debt that Mr. Dauch owed him. A transcription of the letter reads:

J.J. Hinde, Esq.

My Dear Sir,

It is right and proper that you should be fully informed as to your matters in my hands. I have spent nearly two days in drawing off and adding up your accounts and enclosed send you a copy from my books, which you can examine at your leisure. You will perceive that I have received and paid out within the last two years over $36,000. I also send you a memorandum of the notes, mortgages and of yours I have in my hands. You ought to possess this information and I therefore send it to you. I know you put the greatest confidence in me and I mean to deserve, but you and I both may die and those who come after us will wish to and should know how matters stand with us.

Most kindly

Yours

E.B. Sadler

Hudson paid up his interest to day $326.74 and I deposited it to your credit.

($36,000 is equivalent to almost a million dollars today.)

In 1882, Ebenezer B. Sadler was a seasoned attorney, and a former judge aged 74; J.J. Dauch, a young 25, was a partner in a wholesale lake ice business, as well as one of the proprietors of the Buckeye Business and Telegraph College, later the Sandusky Business College. J.J. Dauch would go on to be one of the founders of the Hinde and Dauch Paper Company.

We do not have records that indicate if or when Mr. Dauch settled his account with E.B. Sadler, but both men went down in local history as being well respected in their fields. This letter suggests that  Dauch called upon Sadler for financial assistance in his early business ventures. 

E.B. Sadler died on March 25, 1888, and J.J. Dauch was killed in an automobile accident on August 15, 1918. The final resting place of both of these former Sandusky leaders is Oakland Cemetery.