Date of this Version
Summer 6-22-2026
Document Type
Article
Citation
Pyatt, Timothy D. "An Unsolved Theft" (2026)
Abstract
This article explores the mysterious theft of Civil War narratives from the libraries of the University of North Carolina and Duke University in the late 1970s while the author was an undergraduate at Duke. Using records preserved in the Duke University Archives and personal accounts, the author pieces together how the theft was discovered and the investigation was conducted. Potential suspects included the notorious thieves James Shinn and Stephen Blumberg as well as individuals identified during the investigation. The secrecy around the investigation as well as the effort to protect institutional reputation may have ultimately led to the theft never being solved. The aftermath of these and other thefts led to institutional changes, including the development of guidelines for reporting thefts and sharing information with colleagues and other institutions. As a result, the response to the Gilbert Bland thefts that both schools experienced in 1995 was very different from how they handled the thefts in the 1970s.
