Objects are important touchstones to history. They’re important in ways some folks don’t seem to understand.
Some time ago, I wrote about my grandfather’s pocket watch, its importance to my family’s history, and how it rests today on a wooden stand on our bookshelves. On Saturday, we learn that another pocket watch, this one considerably more famous, has made its way back to where it belongs:
The silver pocket watch was a prized possession of Theodore Roosevelt, a keepsake given to him by his sister and her husband in 1898 before he became president that would travel with him around the world and end up at Sagamore Hill — his home on Long Island, New York, and now a national historic site.
But in 1987, it went from museum piece to pilfered prize when someone stole it from an unlocked case at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in Buffalo, New York, where it was…
