Theodore Roosevelt’s stolen pocket watch back at his New York home

A silver pocket watch given to Theodore Roosevelt by his sister and her husband in 1898 and stolen in 1987 has returned home.

It was stolen from an unlocked case at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in Buffalo, New York, where it was on loan.

It was mystery that endured 36 years until it appeared at a Florida auction house last year and was seized by federal agents.

On Thursday, it was returned to public display at Sagamore Hill, the home of Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States, from 1885 until his death in 1919, as the National Park Service and the FBI announced it was back home during a ceremony featuring Roosevelt’s great-grandson, Tweed Roosevelt.

“This was feel-good news,” Mr Roosevelt, 82, said on 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.”

Growing up, he said he did not know about the watch and only learned about it vaguely after it was stolen. He called it “unremarkable” in appearance, but priceless to his great-grandfather.

“As it turns out, this isn’t just any old pocket watch,” he said. “It was a watch that TR placed great sentimental value on.”

The mystery of the watch’s disappearance, however, is not fully solved. It is still not clear who stole it and how. The Park Service and FBI only released details of its reappearance this week after an investigation. The agencies did not return messages seeking comment on Friday.

Roosevelt, who was president from 1901 to 1909, apparently had the watch with him at the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and during future exploits, including wild game hunting in Africa and exploring the Amazon in South America, according to the Park Service.

The watch, made by the now-defunct Waltham Watch Co in Massachusetts, appears like many pocket watches of its day, with a plain silver exterior and no etchings. But the inside reveals its significance, with engraving that says “THEODORE ROOSEVELT” and “FROM D.R. & C.R.R.,” referring to Roosevelt’s brother-in-law and sister, Douglas Robinson Jr and Corinne Roosevelt Robinson.

When it appeared in 2023 at Blackwell Auctions in Clearwater, Florida, owner Edwin Bailey was excited by the engraving but sceptical it was real. It had no supporting documents with it, and the general mindset among art dealers and collectors is to verify before getting your hopes up, he said.

Mr Bailey said he did not know the watch was stolen, and the person who brought it to him did not know where it came from. He declined to identify the person, saying he never divulges the identities of his consigners. He would only say the person was an art dealer and collector in Buffalo in the 1970s and 1980s.

The collector told Mr Bailey that he received the watch from another man who used to borrow money from him to go “picking” for antiques and other collectibles in the late 1980s. The picker would leave the watch with the collector as collateral, Mr Bailey said.

One day, the picker never returned to retrieve the watch, and the collector found out that he had died, Mr Bailey said.

“This dealer probably had that thing just squirrelled away for 30 years thinking it was just another pocket watch,” Mr Bailey said. “I don’t think that my consigner had a clue about not only where it came from, but he probably didn’t even suspect it was real.”

Mr Bailey said he researched the watch for weeks, pouring through Roosevelt’s writings in online archives, trying to come up with definitive proof it was authentic. He said he found several bits of evidence that made him believe it was. The FBI, Park Service and Sagamore Hill officials would later confirm it was the real deal.

In a note to his sister in May 1898, Roosevelt wrote, “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.”

He also mentioned a watch in his 1914 book Through The Brazilian Wilderness. Writing about a bayou crossing, he said “One result of the swim, by the way, was that my watch, a veteran of Cuba and Africa, came to an indignant halt.”

Mr Bailey believes that was the same watch Roosevelt’s sister and brother-in-law gave him.

Mr Bailey also wrote letters and sent pictures of the watch to various museums, the Sagamore Hill historic site and others, asking if they had any information about it.

Last year, shortly before he was set to put the watch up for auction, Mr Bailey got a visit from the FBI.

“It was exciting,” Mr Bailey said. “I’ve had a small handful of items that I say ‘these are the best things I’ve ever handled’. I got to hold something that was personally treasured by a prominent American president. This was Teddy Roosevelt’s watch. This was a Mount Rushmore guy’s personal pocket watch.”