George Washington letter at auction returned to archives
Published April 20th, 2006
A letter signed by George Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War and stolen 60 years ago from the Massachusetts state archives is back in a storage, rescued days before it was to be offered on an online auction block.
In late February, a staffer for the Massachusetts Historical Commission saw the Washington letter listed in an auction catalog published by Heritage Galleries and Auctioneers of Dallas.
Valued by the auction gallery at $60,000 to $80,000, the letter was among 750 items, worth an estimated $5 million, offered from the collection of Henry Luhrs, a Pennsylvania man who spent a lifetime collecting more than 10,000 autographs, manuscripts and photographs.
Alan Cote, the secretary of Massachusetts’ supervisor of public records, called the Texas gallery two before the Feb. 21 auction and persuaded the owners to withdraw the Washington letter from the sale.
Over the next several weeks, state officials negotiated for the document’s return, offering proof it had been stolen.
Luhrs bought the letter 50 years ago, probably from the Goodspeed’s Book Shop in Boston, which closed in 1993, said Tom Slater, director of Americana for the auction house.
“No one conceded it was stolen,” Slater said of the letter. “There was an arrangement made whereby it would go to the state of Massachusetts, and it was withdrawn (from the auction).”
