Theodore Roosevelt served as president more than a century ago, but relics from his life remain intact to this day. One item of his, a silver pocket watch engraved with his name, was stolen from a museum display case nearly 40 years ago. But after almost four decades at large, the watch has finally been recovered.
The National Park Service confirmed the find in a June 27 statement. The watch was a trusty timepiece for Roosevelt, who kept it with him during many key points of his life, including his famous charge up San Juan Hill and his travels to Africa and the Amazon.
It was loaned to the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in 1971 for a six-year term to show it in an exhibition; the loan was extended but the watch was reported stolen from the site in 1987. It will now be available for free public viewing for the next three months at the Old Orchard Museum at Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, Roosevelt's longtime home in Cove Neck, New York.
"This watch was a fairly pedestrian Waltham 17 jewel watch with an inexpensive coin silver case," FBI art crime special agent Robert Giczy said in a statement of the artifact. "It's a 'Riverside' grade and model '1888' with a hunter-style case, meaning it has a lid on either side which fold and encase the dial and the movement."
The piece was discovered to be the real deal when a Florida auctioneer was asked to auction off a pocket watch from the late 1800s and he realized it might have real historical ties. He was likely tipped off by it being engraved with Roosevelt's full name as well as the initials "D.R. & C.R.R." for his younger sister Corinne Roosevelt Robinson and brother-in-law Douglas Robinson Jr.
It wasn't just a practical item for Roosevelt, as he had a sentimental connection to it. "Darling Corinne, you could not have given me a more useful present than the watch; it was exactly what I wished," he wrote to his sister in 1898, per the NPS. "Thank old Douglas for the watch—and for his many, many kindnesses."
Sagamore Hill National Historic Site superintendent Jonathan Parker celebrated the watch's long-overdue return.
"The stories this watch could tell over the last 126 years include colorful and profound moments in American history," he said in an NPS statement. "Historic objects are powerful because they are literal participants in historic events, and in the case of this storied watch, it is also a beloved family heirloom of a renowned American president."
Needless to say it's about time it was returned.
