Library gets book back. Nearly 145 years late.
Washington and Lee University has a missing library book back on its shelves _ nearly 145 years after it was stolen by a Union soldier during the Civil War.
The 1842 book, the first volume of W.F.P. Napier's four-volume "History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France From the Year 1807 to the Year 1814," was returned recently by a friend of one of the soldier's descendants to the Lexington school's Leyburn Library.
Mistakenly thinking he was at adjoining Virginia Military Institute, soldier C.S. Gates pilfered the book on June 11, 1864, from the library of what was then Washington College, university officials said this week. The theft took place when Army of West Virginia Gen. David Hunter's troops raided the area and looted the college's buildings. No other details about Gates were available from the university.
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The 1842 book, the first volume of W.F.P. Napier's four-volume "History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France From the Year 1807 to the Year 1814," was returned recently by a friend of one of the soldier's descendants to the Lexington school's Leyburn Library.
Mistakenly thinking he was at adjoining Virginia Military Institute, soldier C.S. Gates pilfered the book on June 11, 1864, from the library of what was then Washington College, university officials said this week. The theft took place when Army of West Virginia Gen. David Hunter's troops raided the area and looted the college's buildings. No other details about Gates were available from the university.