Federal investigators recovered a 126-year-old pocket watch belonging to the 26th U.S. President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt which was stolen 37 years ago, authorities said Thursday.
The National Park Service (NPS) investigators recovered the presidential item from a Florida auction house in 2023 after an auctioneer suspected the watch might have been Roosevelt’s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said.
Roosevelt’s youngest sister, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, and his brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson, Jr. gifted him the silver watch, as indicated by an inscription on the inside of its upper lid: “THEODORE ROOSEVELT FROM D.R. & C.R.R.,” the statement revealed.
They gave Roosevelt the watch in 1898 and then-war commander Roosevelt traveled with it to the famed Battle of San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American war for Cuba’s independence from Spain, the NPS said. Roosevelt also reportedly later traveled with the watch to the African continent and down the Amazon River.
The NPS’s Sagamore Hill National Historic Site — a museum formerly Roosevelt’s “Summer White House” home from 1885 until 1919 when he died — kept the watch since Roosevelt’s death. They loaned it for six years to the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, another NPS-directed museum, on the site of Roosevelt’s presidential inauguration in 1901 after the assassination of President William McKinley. The watch was stolen from the museum July 21, 1987, while on display during an extension of the loan period.
It was not seen again until the Florida auctioneer received a request to auction the item. The auctioneer — believing the watch might be Roosevelt’s — contacted the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site and Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site. Both institutions in turn contacted the NPS, which then recovered the watch. The NPS then contacted the FBI‘s Art Crime team, which assisted with the seizure and forfeiture of the asset and its return in a repatriation ceremony Thursday to the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, the FBI’s statement revealed. (RELATED: Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘Nightstand Gun’ Auctioned Off For Enormous Price)
The Florida auctioneer identified himself to the Associated Press (AP) as Edwin Bailey, owner of Blackwell Auctions in Clearwater, Florida. Bailey told the AP that the watch’s consigner, an art dealer and collector in Buffalo in the 1970s and 1980s, did not know the watch’s origins. A collector of antiques reportedly left the watch with the consigner as collateral for loans to fund antique collecting but one day never returned to retrieve the watch. The consigner then found out the antique collector had died.
The Waltham Watch Company manufactured the watch, as implied in FBI Special Agent Robert Giczy’s description of the watch’s origin in the FBI’s statement. The company was the first mass manufacturer of U.S.-made watches in the 1850s but went out of business in 1949, according to First Class Watches.
NPS and FBI representatives as well as Roosevelt family members attended the repatriation ceremony at the Sagamore museum in New York, the statements reported.
Special Agent Giczy called the watch “our national property” and hailed the NPS-FBI collaboration for ensuring “that this historic treasure could be returned safely for future generations to enjoy.”
The FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division Assistant Director Michael Nordwall called the watch “this extraordinary piece of Americana”.
The “storied watch” was one of the “literal participants in historic events”, according to Superintendent Jonathan Parker of Sagamore Hill National Historic Site.
National Park Service Director Chuck Sams acknowledged the “honour to have a role in preserving American history” and “the spirit of preservation”.
“This was feel-good news,” Roosevelt’s 82-year-old great-grandson Tweed Roosevelt reportedly told the AP Friday. “For me, it kind of felt like almost as if a piece of TR’s spirit being returned to Sagamore Hill, like a little bit of him was coming back. And so I felt that was really cool.”
