TR's Colt Returns...

[St. George]

Sixteen years after it went missing, a revolver that Teddy Roosevelt carried during the Spanish-American War has been returned.

The Colt revolver, which disappeared in 1990 from a display case that police said had been jimmied open at the Sagamore Hill National Historical Site, was returned to the museum Wednesday.

It was recovered by the FBI after someone called the museum with a tip in September, according to Robert Goldman, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia who led the Justice Department's investigation along with the FBI's Art Crime unit.

The pistol was originally salvaged from the wreck of the USS Maine, whose mysterious sinking in Havana's harbor fueled the public outrage that led to war.

Roosevelt got the .38 caliber gun from a brother-in-law who served as a Navy captain, and carried it with him when he rode to war with the Volunteer Cavalry Regiment he helped form.

They were better known as 'the Rough Riders'...

Scouts Out!







The pistol became a valued family heirloom, and was later given two inscriptions noting its origins on the USS Maine and its use by Roosevelt, then a Colonel, at San Juan Hill.