Almost four decades after it was stolen from a Buffalo, New York, museum, a pocket watch carried by the 26th president, Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, was returned to his family home on Long Island, officials said.
The silver pocket watch was returned to the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site in Oyster Bay, which is where Roosevelt had the “Summer White House” during his presidency, the National Park Service and the FBI said.
The watch is engraved with Roosevelt’s name and “D.R. & C.R.R.” — the initials of Roosevelt’s younger sister, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, and his brother-in-law Douglas Robinson Jr.
It was stolen from a museum in Buffalo in 1987. The thief was never caught, but last year the watch ended up before a Florida auction house, where an auctioneer researched it and recognized its significance, the FBI said.
The watch will be on display at the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.
“The stories this watch could tell over the last 126 years include colorful and profound moments in American history,” Jonathan Parker, superintendent of the site, said in a statement.
Roosevelt was given the watch by his younger sister and brother-in-law before he left to fight in Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
Roosevelt quit his post as assistant secretary of the Navy to go fight in the war. He would make a name for himself with the “Rough Riders” during that conflict, and he carried the watch during the charge up San Juan Hill, the National Park Service said.
He also carried the watch as president and during an exploration of the Amazon River in 1913, which nearly killed him.
The watch was formally repatriated Thursday at a ceremony at the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, which included officials from the National Park Service and the FBI.
Roosevelt had several watches, and while Special Agent Robert Giczy, a member of the FBI Art Crime Team, described it as “a fairly pedestrian Waltham 17 jewel watch with an inexpensive coin silver case,” it had sentimental value to Roosevelt and now historic value to everyone else.
“Darling Corinne, You could not have given me a more useful present than the watch; it was exactly what I wished…Thank old Douglas for the watch — and for his many, many kindnesses,” Roosevelt wrote to his sister on May 5, 1898.
Roosevelt became the governor of New York in 1899. He was President William McKinley’s vice president in 1901, but only for a little more than six months before McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt assumed the presidency the day McKinley died. He won his first presidential election in 1904, served until 1909 and lost a bid for a third term in 1912.
