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Oil on canvas portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Feds want stolen Alexander Hamilton letter returned

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
Oil on canvas portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Oil on canvas portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

BOSTON (AP) – A 1780 letter from Alexander Hamilton to the Marquis de Lafayette stolen from the Massachusetts Archives decades ago has been found and now an effort is underway to get it back.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Boston this week filed a forfeiture complaint in federal court asking a judge to order the letter returned to the state.

The letter, along with original papers of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere and others, was stolen by an archives employee sometime between 1937 and 1945.

The letter resurfaced in November when an auction house in Virginia received it from a South Carolina family that wanted to sell it. The letter was part of a deceased relative’s estate.

The auction house determined it had been stolen and contacted the FBI.

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