There have been similar issues with German and Japanese artifacts
(rather than printed material) liberated by World War II soldiers.
IIRC, a rare church statue, taken from a German church ended in Texas a
couple of years ago with the Church paying ransom to the heirs of the
soldier who brought it home.
Of course the Louvre is essentially a collection of material "liberated"
by Napoleon.
And the National Archives this year has instituted new security
procedures to protect its holdings against "liberators."
E-Bay facilitates the discovering of these items -- but also encourages
the theft.
I would add that the disposal of printed material after microfilming and
digitalizing or just because no one checks it out is a problem that
public libraries face. IT used to be that anything they tossed was
stamped "DISCARD," but they no longer do that.
The result is that antiquarian bookstores, which refused to deal is
"ex-lib" books have abandoned that policy since so many ex-library books
were tossed by the library rather than "borrowed" by users.
No solutions, just commentary.
Take care,
Bob
Judy and Bob Huddleston
10643 Sperry Street
Northglenn, CO 80234-3612
303.451.6276 [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: A LISTSERV list for discussions pertaining to New York State
history. [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of William Ringle
Sent: Monday, October 29, 2001 2:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Buying back of stolen public records
A footnote to the discussion of the private sale of public records:
Officials in Virginia and other Southern states have had, and continue
to have, much experience with buying back public records, many of them
going back to the 1600s. I'm just writing an article on that very
subject. Their experince indicates that the answer to Mr.McGiver's
question is that they are definitely private property. because the
Virginia Historical Society or the Viriginia state archives have had to
pay for them -- in some cases through the nose -- when the buyers
demanded it.
These were records stolen by Union soldiers during wanton looting of
county courthouses during the Civil War. A couple of months ago The
Washington Post carried a piece about records retrieved, via Ebay, by
Prince William County , VA, not far from Washington..
Charles City County's experience antedates Ebay. Beginning in 1901 and
on a dozen subsequent occasions through 1991, scores of records of that
county alone have trickled back from New York, Massachusetts, Michigan,
Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio and Vermont..They were returned by
descendants of Union soldiers, by state or local historical societies to
which they'd been donated, and by a rare book dealer.
One batch was of 77 pages, from 1642 to 1842, and others were from
1677-79, 1681, 1685, 1687-95, 1692/93, and 1696 They were pilfered,
apparently as "souvenirs," when Union Gen. McClellan's III Army Corps
stopped at Charles City during its retreat from Malvern Hill (or
Harrison's Landing).
On the front page of one Charles City County "Executors Bond Book" for
1813-14 is a penciled notation by a Union captain who had picked it up
by the roadside and returned it, along with his "protest against all
destruction of like property and all wanton destruction of property
whatever." The county clerk wrote on the same page that the "Yankee
soldiers not only took (it) ... but they destroyed or carried away every
book and paper they found in the office."
An account of that looting was left by another Union soldier, Private
Robert Knox Sneden. In a diary of his war experiences on Aug 15, 1862,
he wrote that "the soldiers had forced an entrance into the court house
and were rummaging over the archives for relics, strewing parchment
title deeds and other law papers over the floors. They were [then]
ejected by a guard and a sentinel placed at the entrance to prevent
further pillages ..." Sneden's diary and his watercolor sketches of
military life came to light in 1994 and are now in the Virginia
Historical Society's collection. Many are included in a remarkable book,
"Images from the Storm," published in 2001 by The Free Press.
The handwritten court orders that have been retrieved included wills,
records of lawsuits, deeds of bargain and sale, lease and release,
inventories of estates and wills. Many of them deal with families
prominent in Virginia and U. S. history including Randolphs, Byrds,
Carters, Harrisons and Tylers.
"We still hope that people will keep an eye out for these kinds of
irreplaceable documents and return them to the Clerk's office," says
Judy Ledbetter, the Charles City County historian.She wonders how many
similar purloined records were simply destroyed, ended up in private
collections, are on a shelf in some auction house or used-book store, or
are still packed away, forgotten, in someone's attic.
A couple of weeks ago she told me that recently on Ebay she'd seen "a
few Hanover County (Va.) documents," bought them herself and given them
to a public repository..
William Ringle
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