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A letter from Alexander Hamilton dating back to 1780 and stolen more than 74 years ago in Boston has resurfaced in Virginia.
The letter was addressed to the Marquis de Lafayette in Rhode Island and warned against a British plan to attack Newport.
"We have just received notices from New York through different channels that the enemy is doing a boarding with which they are threatening the French fleet and the French army," wrote Hamilton. "Fifty transports would have climbed into the Sound to embark troops and go directly to Rhode Island.
The attack was canceled when the French rushed to strengthen their defenses, reported the Associated Press.
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The image to the left shows a letter from Alexander Hamilton dated 1780 addressed to the Marquis de Lafayette, stolen from the Massachusetts Archives several decades ago.
(US Attorney's Office via AP)
The Boston lawyer, Andrew Leilling, went to court on Wednesday to demand the return of the letter to the Massachusetts Archives, from which it disappeared.
"The theft, which also involved original George Washington papers, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere and Benedict Arnold, among others, was not discovered until several years ago," says Lilling's confiscation action.
An employee of the Massachusetts Archives stole the documents between 1937 and 1945 and sold them to dealers of rare documents and books.
This person was arrested in 1950 for theft.
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Leilling's lawyers believe the letter was found in the hands of a collector who had bought it from a dealer in Syracuse, New York, in the 1940s.
When this collector died, his collection was divided between his children.
In November, the heir who had found himself with the letter had ceded it to an auction house in Alexandria, Virginia. The house estimated the letter at $ 35,000.
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Before putting the letter on sale, a researcher from the auction house went on Founders.com to verify the authenticity of the document and learned that he was missing from the Massachusetts Archives , Boston.com reported Saturday.
The auction house then contacted the FBI.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
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