President Roosevelt’s Beloved Pocket Watch Was Stolen Nearly 40 Years Ago, And Up Until Now, The Watch’s Whereabouts Remained A Mystery
For almost 40 years, a pocket watch that once belonged to President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt has been missing ever since it was stolen from a museum exhibition. Finally, it turned up at an auction house in Florida decades later. Here’s what happened.
In 1971, the president’s pocket watch was put on display at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in Buffalo, New York.
But in 1987, someone took the watch from its case, which was unlocked at the time. From then on, the FBI and the National Park Service have been searching for the watch.
Until now, the watch’s whereabouts have remained a mystery. After all these years, the historic artifact made its way to Florida.
It ended up in the possession of Edwin Bailey, the owner of Blackwell Auctions in Clearwater, Florida.
There was an inscription of the president’s name on the watch, leading Bailey to believe it had belonged to Theodore Roosevelt. However, no documents came with the watch, so he needed to find other ways to verify ownership.
He contacted the Sagamore Hill National Historic Site, the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, and two museums associated with the president. They confirmed that the watch seemed to be a genuine artifact.
In 2023, right before he put the watch up for auction, several prospective buyers visited Bailey. The buyers were actually FBI agents.
After recovering the watch, they returned it to Sagamore Hill during a repatriation ceremony. Many officials from agencies that worked to solve the case of the missing watch were in attendance.
Scisetti Alfio – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
“This was feel-good news,” said Tweed Roosevelt, the president’s 82-year-old great-grandson. “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.”
Throughout his life, Roosevelt owned many pocket watches, but this one was special because it held a lot of meaning to the president, even though it wasn’t worth much monetarily.
“As it turns out, this isn’t just any old pocket watch. It was a watch that TR placed great sentimental value on,” Tweed Roosevelt continued.
According to Special Agent Robert Giczy, a member of the FBI Art Crime Team, the watch was a “fairly pedestrian Waltham 17 jewel watch with an inexpensive coin silver case.
It’s a ‘Riverside’ grade and model ‘1888’ with a hunter-style case.” This means the case has a lid on either side that folds and encases the dial and the movement.
The watch was gifted to Roosevelt by his youngest sister, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, and her husband, Douglas Robinson Jr.
They gave the watch to him before he left for Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898. He carried the watch with him in Cuba, as well as during trips to Africa and the Amazon.
Now that the heirloom has been recovered, it can be enjoyed for many generations to come.
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