Colt Revolver From 1800s Returned to State Museum 50 Years After It Was Stolen

A Colt revolver from the 1800s that was stolen from the state museum more than 50 years ago has been located. It is one of dozens of artifacts dating back as far as the French and Indian War that were stolen in the 1970s from several states and have been returned to the institutions, according to federal authorities.

The FBI announced at a ceremony at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia that 50 items had been repatriated to 17 institutions in five states and one is a Colt Whitneyville Walker revolver that stolen from the Connecticut State Library in 1971.

The state museum said detectives in Pennsylvania investigated a tip from 2009 about some weapons that had been stolen from the Valley Forge Historical Society and discovered that the crime was connected to thefts from 16 other organizations spanning five states between 1968 and 1979.

Since the suspect lived outside their jurisdiction, the FBI’s Art Crime Team got involved.

Then, in 2017, FBI agents served a search warrant at a Delaware home and found several stolen historic weapons, but not the ones that had spurred the investigation.

Authorities said Michael Corbett of Newark, Delaware, was indicted in December 2021 for possession of items stolen from museums in the 1970s. In August, he pleaded guilty to possession of stolen items transported interstate and turned over additional stolen items.

Other items that were located include an 1847 Mississippi rifle stolen from a Mississippi museum, a World War II battlefield pickup pistol belonging to General Omar Bradley — stolen from the U.S. Army War College Museum — and 19th century Pennsylvania rifles stolen from Pennsylvania museums, officials said.

History of Colt Whitneyville-Walkers Revolvers

The state museum said Colonel Samuel Colt made a series of .44 caliber, six-shot “Colt Whitneyville-Walkers” revolvers in 1847 under contract with the U.S. War Department for issue to the United States Mounted Rifles during the Mexican War.

Samuel H. Walker, who was a member of the Texas Rangers, was one of the first to use Colt’s Paterson revolver in combat and was pleased with the results.

In 1846, he was appointed captain of the Mounted Rifleman in the U.S. Army and he and Colt worked together to make modifications to the revolver’s trigger and increased its capacity to a six-shot, the state library museum said.

In 1847, Walker secured a U.S. War Department contract for 1,000 of Samuel Colt’s new revolvers.

Colt had recently closed his New Jersey armory and enlisted help from Eli Whitney Jr., the son of the famous American inventor to create the cotton gin, who had taken over his father’s armory in the Whitneyville section of New Haven in 1842.

The Colt Whitneyville-Walker revolvers were individually stamped with the Mounted Rifle company letters and the number of the soldier to whom the weapon was to be issued, according to the state library museum.

Of the 1,000 weapons that were produced for the U.S. War Department, about 239 of them were lost immediately due to faulty cylinders that burst when fired, according to the state library, and there are only around 155 Colt Whitneyville-Walker 1847 revolvers still in existence.

The Museum of Connecticut History’s Colt Whitneyville-Walker was donated in 1957 as part of a collection from the Arthur L. Ulrich Museum, which was the original Colt Factory Collection formed by Samuel Colt.

With the revolver back in its possession, the museum is still considering the best and most secure way to display it.

“It’s incredible to have an object return after going missing for over 50 years,” Administrator Jennifer Matos said in a statement. “So much work went into the investigation that led to its recovery, and we are extremely grateful to everyone involved.”