One day in 1781, George Washington wrote a letter to the Maryland Assembly. Sometime after that, it vanished from the state files.
But there was a happy ending. The Sun reported 70 years ago this month that the letter written by Washington after his victory over the British at Yorktown was returned to Maryland.
At a ceremony at the Hall of Records, a group of Marylanders presented the manuscript to Gov. Harry W. Nice for preservation among other historical documents in the hall. The letter, valued then at more than $8,000, was purchased on behalf of 21 subscribers at an auction in England in 1929.
[Sources: Sun archives and Paul McCardell, Sun researcher]