The Museum & FBI Team Up to Return Stolen Artifacts

The FBI, along with partners from the Department of Justice and the Upper Merion Township Police Department (UMTPD) in Pennsylvania, recently helped recover stolen Revolutionary War-era U.S. firearms that were a part of a string of thefts in the 1960s and 1970s in and around Valley Forge National Historical Park. Dozens of items have been returned during a series of repatriation ceremonies held at the Museum. The recovered firearms were among a wider swath of items looted during these robberies, for which little evidence as to the perpetrators had been uncovered in the past. Since the investigation into these thefts started in 2009, three men — Michael Corbett, Scott Corbett, and Thomas Gavin — have admitted taking items from the park and from the Valley Forge Historical Society located within Washington Memorial Chapel and helped investigators locate stolen items.