Found: Stolen Alexander Hamilton Letter to the Marquis de Lafayette | Hacker News Reader

Found: Stolen Alexander Hamilton Letter to the Marquis de Lafayette

smithsonianmag.com

55 pointsagronaut25 comments

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The contents of the letter: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-02-02-07...

>I am My Dear Marquis with the truest affection Yr. Most Obedt

What does Obedt mean here? Was Hamilton really literally a servant?

No - it's just a very polite/formal way of singing a letter to royalty/gentry. Like "Yours sincerely" turned up to 11.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Yr-mO1o1uHk

A relevant song from the Broadway show

No more than saying "yours truly" means you are literally that person's property. A more modern phrasing of the same sentiment might go something like "happy to be of service, as always".

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/362307/where-did... has some examples, including a case where a letter ending "your obedient servant" got a reply from "your humble servant." It's a style, a formal way of showing respect through humility, not meant to be taken literally.

Obedient.

When something like this is found, is the family just out of luck as far as the value of the item goes, or do they somehow get compensated? Obviously they didn't know it was stolen when they bought it from the rare document dealer. Is there insurance for cases like that?

Also how much time has to pass before the stolen nature becomes immaterial? I would imagine that a majority of artifacts in most history museums fit some definition of the word "stolen". Is this just different because it was stolen within the last century?

I'm sure that a lot of suitably ancient theft is shrugged off—I guess even that suitably ancient theft eventually becomes synonymous with possession—but the example of the Elgin marbles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles) shows that it's not always so.

A lot of these pieces, including the Elgin Marbles, weren't part of an ancient theft. Many of them weren't stolen until the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries. For example, the UK has also refused to return certain pieces of artwork that the Nazis stole from Holocaust victims. That theft occurred at roughly the same time this letter was stolen.

> A lot of these pieces, including the Elgin Marbles, weren't part of an ancient theft. Many of them weren't stolen until the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries.

I'll grant that it's getting into terminological quibbles, but I'd call the 18th century (or the early 19th, as for the Elgin marbles) probably about as ancient as a theft can be while still allowing us to have some reasonable idea of who the 'true' owners are. Farther back than that, I imagine one gets into the mists of increasingly inaccurate histories, not to mention of mutually conflicting but equally viable claims on who is the rightful owner and who the thief.

i present you with an 18th century australian shield being claimed:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/aboriginal-m...

> An Aboriginal man demanding the return of an ancestral shield seized by James Cook in 1770 has become the first living member of his clan to hold it after being invited to a private viewing by the British Museum.

> Mr Kelly said repatriation was important in light of “all the stuff that’s happened in the past” and it would be a “huge moment in time to have the British Museum and others actually return things to the Aboriginal people because it would be a great step towards the healing process.”

> Mr Kelly’s claim to the artefacts has been backed by a motion passed in 2016 by New South Wales’ parliament, which acknowledged his clan as the shield’s rightful owners; Australia’s Senate followed suit two months later.

I would love to read how they came to that conclusion.

There's a clawback provision in place in most major auction house contracts that states that the funds for any sold item (or the item itself) can, at any point in the future, be recouped from the buyer/seller if proven to have been stolen or fraudulent.

Basically as the seller of such an item you'll be sued, so be sure proof of provenance is sound. In this case the letter was part of a government archive, so back to Massachusetts it will go...

They can sue the dealer that sold them the object. I'm sure they can get insurance too but possibly the insurer would do some research on the object before underwriting. Kind of like title insurance.

I bought title insurance last week because I had to. But I'm curious what it's about.

Is it in case someone shows up and is like, "no I'm the actual owner of the house. The seller defrauded everyone, look at all this evidence."?

Yes, that’s exactly what it’s for.

A more realistic scenario is a family member sold a house but didn’t own the rights. Next thing you know, another family member shows up and tries to dispute the sale.

That’s how I understand it.

The other replies are correct, but there are also subtler problems that title insurance can cover. One example I remember reading about was an old surveying error that resulted in an inlaw unit encroaching 6 inches on a neighbor's property. If such a problem is discovered, the insurance company might negotiate with the neighbor to purchase a perpetual easement or, failing that, pay to have the inlaw unit either moved or altered to correct the problem.

Yes the title insurer does their research for any discrepancies and then insures you and the lender against certain risks.

Chorus: “32,000 troops in new york harbour”

Immigrants, they get the job done!

Note to self: don't steal stuff that will still be scorching hot 80 years later. Except kisses.

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