Long-missing revolver returned to Chicago History Museum

PITTSBURGH -- A Civil War buff from western Pennsylvania has returned a historic revolver to the Chicago museum from which it was stolen decades earlier.

Robert Hassinger on Tuesday turned over the 1851 Colt revolver to officials from the Chicago History Museum. The revolver once belonged to Owen Brown, a son of John Brown, the abolitionist who led an ill-fated 1859 raid on a military arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Va.

The North Hills man traded for the revolver at a gun show in 1991, owning it for a decade before discovering that its serial number matched that of a weapon missing since the 1940s.

Hassinger contacted the museum and offered to return the weapon when officials provided documentation of its donation in the 1920s and a newspaper account of its theft in 1948.