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A large, 19th century family Bible, opened to its title page with an inscription on the facing page
A family Bible, looted by a British officer in the War of 1812, was returned more than a century later. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

A Looted Bible, Returned to the Library

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—This is a guest post by Allison Buser, a reference assistant in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. It also appears in the January-February issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. 

The order that resulted in the devastation of the first congressional library during the War of 1812 arrived in the city of Washington on Aug. 24, 1814. As word reached Washington of the impending arrival of British forces, government officials and citizens fled.

The British easily marched in, ransacked and burned the Treasury, the President’s House (the White House), the Navy Yard, the Capitol (and the Library of Congress inside) and other federal buildings. Troops were ordered not to pillage or destroy civilian property, a command that largely was respected.

But one Royal Marines officer, Nathanael Cole, decided to extricate a keepsake, though it’s not clear from where: a King James family Bible, printed in Philadelphia in 1807 by Mathew Carey.

Cole later gave his prize to his sister-in-law, and it became the Cole/Dean family Bible. In the family record section, the family logged generations of births, marriages and deaths.

A photo of a note written out in longhand in a flowing script.
“This Bible was taken at the Battle of Washington….” an insert into the Cole/Dean family Bible details its history. Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

At some point during the Bible’s British captivity, a paper was attached to the inner front cover relating how the family came to possess the Bible, along with an injunction that it was “never to be given out of the Family.”

That order notwithstanding, the Bible eventually was gifted to the United States and returned to Washington with a second paper, attached to the inner back cover, inscribed thusly:

“This bible having left the possession of the family of Major Cole, for reasons and by ways unknown to the present owner, is returned to Washington by Commander Harry Bent Royal Navy as a gesture of goodwill and gratitude to the people of the United States of America. September 1957.”

After the 1812 ransacking, Washington was gradually rebuilt, and its collections of books, cultural artifacts and institutions expanded far beyond what was destroyed. Like the city, this Bible — now part of the Library’s collections — has endured over 200 years and bears the marks of its history.

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Comments

  1. Were there any other names included in the Bible?

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