The Mystery Behind Lincoln's Lost Letters

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Collecting
The Mystery Behind Lincoln's Lost Letters
Monte Burke, 04.24.09, 07:15 PM EDT
Inside the family feud with huge implications for collectors and historians of the 16th president's memorabilia.



Robert Connelly, an antiques and collectibles appraiser in Binghamton, N.Y., remembers the day in 1980 when he met the man now known in court files as "the Phantom."

Connelly, 69, was in his driveway when a man he'd never seen before drove up unannounced and produced a trunk. The Phantom was what's known as a "picker" in the collecting business, someone who finds items and sells them to dealers. He thought the trunk might be of special interest to Connelly. It contained 713 Civil War-era letters, written in Abraham Lincoln's hand, to his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles.

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Connelly stood in his driveway, dumbfounded, and for 20 minutes he looked over the letters.

"They were unbelievable. I was thinking, 'Wow,'" he says. "Some were two sentences long, others were three pages long. They would have changed our whole concept of Civil War naval battles."

The man claimed that the trunk had come from an attic of a Welles descendant and was stored with other items like a wine decanter used by Lincoln and a flag from the Civil War battleship, the CSS Alabama. Connelly figures that if you cut out the Lincoln signatures and threw away the letters, the trunk would be worth $3.5 million. "If the letters were sold intact? Much, much more than that," he says. And if somehow the decanter and flag and other items, together with the trunk, could be obtained? "I'd rather have that than hit the mega lotto," he says, "which is at what, $155 million right now?

But Connelly missed his chance. Connelly appraised a few pieces verbally, then the Phantom left just as quickly as he showed up. Connelly says he has neither seen nor heard from the man since.

The next time the missing trunk of Gideon Welles turned up was 24 years later in a brief story that ran in the American Society of Appraisers magazine, ASA Professional. The story set off a firestorm that has ripped a family apart and recently garnered the attention of a special agent in the Office of the Inspector General. The trunk of letters, if it exists, has potentially huge implications for both American history and the robust trade in the collectibles of Abraham Lincoln, especially during his bicentennial.

So much so that twin branches of Gideon Welles' descendent's, the Welles and the Brainards, have squared off in a legal spat over his heirlooms that has recently intensified.

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On April 6, 2009, the Town Clerks Office in small Hartford suburb of Coventry, Conn., received an anonymous letter. In the upper-left-hand corner of the envelope, in lieu of a return address, were only the words "Gideon Welles/Abraham Lincoln."

Within the letter was a single sheet of paper. On one side was the notice of a December 8, 2008, hearing in the Mansfield, Conn., probate court, petitioned by a Jane Lee Douglas Welles, and including 12 names, all of whom descendent's of Gideon Welles. On the other side was a "Memorandum of Understanding" concerning the distribution of some of Gideon Welles' heirlooms, dated September, 2005, and signed by four of the 12 people named on the notice.

At least half a dozen similar letters, all anonymous, were sent to other Connecticut-area town clerks and newspapers. The sender remains unknown. The letters, while cryptic in nature to its recipients, were the latest salvo fired in the Welles family feud.

At issue are the heirlooms of Gideon Welles, the lone member of the 16th president's cabinet--known as the "Team of Rivals"--whom Lincoln considered a friend. Among the items: a Spencer carbine and items Robert Connelly heard about 29 years ago, like the flag from the Civil War ship, the CSS Alabama and the wine decanter used by Lincoln. But the most intriguing heirloom is the trunk once owned by Welles that supposedly contains hundreds of letters penned to Welles from Lincoln.

All of the heirlooms were believed to have been stored in the home of Ruth Welles, the granddaughter-in-law of Gideon Welles, who died in 1955 and left no will. A lawsuit has pitted the families of two of her children versus the family of her other child. Ruth Welles' daughter-in-law, Jane Welles, and her son-in-law, Donald Smith, have sued the four children of Suzanne Welles Brainard and Jesse Brainard on the grounds that these heirlooms, now unaccounted for, were to be evaluated and distributed by the entire family. The Welles/Smith vs. Brainard suit claims that the entire family had an oral agreement "regarding their distribution," but that that Brainard side of the family "never identified, inventoried or evaluated" the heirlooms, which remain at large.

When reached by phone, Timothy J. Johnston, lawyer for the Brainards, said "I'm not interested," and hung up.

On April 8, 2009, the case was dismissed in a Tolland, Conn., which is near Coventry. The Brainards moved to dismiss the case based on the fact that successor fiduciaries had not been established. The court agreed. But Michael Kopsick, the lawyer for the plaintiffs (Welles/Smith) of Kahan, Kerensky & Capossela, says the dismissal was on a technicality. "It was a setback, but it will not in any way preclude the suit being reopened," he says.

The feud has some of the history and collecting world abuzz. Joseph Maddalena, a Los Angeles dealer of historical collectibles, sees the Welles artifacts--in particular the trunk--as a holy grail in Lincolnalia. "God knows what Lincoln could have told Welles," he says. "This could literally rewrite the history of the Civil War." And from a collecting point of view? Maddalena points to a February Christie's auction where a four-page unsigned Lincoln letter sold for $3.8 million.

"Let's say this trunk is found and the letters are disappointing," he says. "They'd still be worth $20 million. If they were extraordinary? We're talking $100 million or more."

Because the dispute possibly includes correspondence from a U.S. president, it has attracted the attention of the feds. Kelly Maltagliati, a special agent with the Office of the Inspector General, has been on the case since 2006. One of her jobs is to retrieve archives of national interest believed to have been stolen from the National Archives. "We don't have a thief at this point, but we're on the case," says Maltagliati, who used to scout Florida swamps for drug runners for U.S. Customs and has been described as "John Wayne with lipstick." Maltagliati, who scans Internet auction sites, attends shows and meets with dealers in her research, says she has only made scant progress into the case thus far.

Kopsick says he has worked with the feds in their search for the Welles artifacts, but that the "800-pound gorilla in the room is the question of who will own them if they surface." Kopsick has pushed on with the investigation. His side is determined to carry on for however long it takes. History will have to wait.



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