Eight Decades Later, FBI Tries To Return Stolen Letter To MA

BOSTON, MA — The federal government filed a motion in U.S. District Court Wednesday seeking to return a letter that had been missing for eight decades before it turned up in a Virginia auction house in November. The July 21, 1780 letter from founding father Alexander Hamilton to French military officer Marquis de Lafayette and other documents had been stolen from the Massachusetts State Archive by an employee sometime between 1937 and 1945. The family that has possession of the letter is disputing that Massachusetts has the right to take it back.

The FBI has seized the letter and yesterday's motion is an attempt to clear its return to Massachusetts. The letter had been displayed in the Florida home of Stewart Crane, who inherited it from his father, for several years. When Crane died last year, his family decided it was too costly to maintain the document and went to sell it through an auction company in Alexandria, VA. When a researcher at the auction house noticed that the letter was missing, he contacted the FBI.

While the family does not want to keep the letter, they are contesting that it should be returned to the government. In the filing submitted Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Carol E. Head cited a 1920 Massachusetts law that charges the state with preserving all original documents dated before 1870.

Stolen Documents Sold To Dealers Across U.S.

An attorney for the Crane family wants more evidence that the letter was stolen from the Archives. "I'd like to have a little better sense of what the government's counsel has in the way of proving title. We may well insist to have some presentation of those proofs before conceding the point," William B. Swent, an attorney to for the family, told Law 360.

Hamilton sent the letter to de Marquis, who was stationed in Danbury, CT, to apprise him of the movement of American troops during the Revolutionary War. "I am My Dear Marquis with the truest affection Yr. Most Obedt A Hamilton Aide De Camp," Hamilton wrote to close the letter. Read a copy of the letter from the National Archives.

The letter, along with the original papers of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere were stolen between 1937 and 1945 by an employee at the archive that was not named in Wednesday's filing. The thefts were not discovered for several years. The employee was arrested in 1950, but by that point he had sold the artifacts to rare book and document dealers throughout the U.S.

The Crane family believes Robert Crane acquired the letter from a Syracuse, NY rare document dealer in the 1940s. Upon his death, Crane's will called for dividing his rare documentation among his children, and the Hamilton letter ended up with Stewart Crane, who died last year.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).