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Museum files counterclaim in dispute over Confederate jacket

A Confederate uniform for sale is seen at the 21st annual Chickamauga Civil War Show, a two-day event at the Northwest Georgia Trade Center that concluded on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016, in Dalton, Ga.
A Confederate uniform for sale is seen at the 21st annual Chickamauga Civil War Show, a two-day event at the Northwest Georgia Trade Center that concluded on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016, in Dalton, Ga. A Confederate uniform for sale is seen at the 21st annual Chickamauga Civil War Show, a two-day event at the Northwest Georgia Trade Center that concluded on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2016, in Dalton, Ga.

By Associated Press 2 min read

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Lawyers for a New Orleans Confederate history museum say they’re hoping for a speedy resolution in a dispute with an Alabama man over ownership of a Confederate Army captain’s jacket.

Attorneys for Memorial Hall Museum, Inc., which operates the Confederate Memorial Hall Museum, filed documents in U.S. District Court on Thursday saying Civil War veteran William Lyman donated his jacket to the organization in 1891. The documents also state that Lyman was an original board member.

Museum officials have said the jacket was stolen sometime before November 1990 and had been included in the museum’s inventory and records.

Joe Fitzgerald of Huntsville, Alabama, has said he paid $44,500 for Lyman’s jacket during a 2009 convention in Nashville and was contacted about it in 2016 by museum representatives.

Memorial Hall officials said they sent a former FBI agent to visit Fitzgerald in Alabama on their behalf to ask him to return the jacket, which was tailored out of homemade jeans by a Highland County, Virginia woman. Museum President Keith Cangelosi said in an affidavit that the jacket was sent to Lyman when he was commanding a company of Virginia infantry soldiers and is worth more than $75,000.