SPRINGFIELD — Two dozen 19th-century marksmanship medals earned by members of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, donated to the Springfield Armory by their relatives during World War II, could be returning to the museum.
U.S. Attorney Rachael S. Rollins announced Friday that a civil forfeiture action has begun to ensure that the medals, recovered in February in Tennessee from a private collector who claimed to have paid $4,500 for their acquisition, can be brought back to the national historic site operated by the National Park Service.
“Massachusetts is the birthplace of the American Revolution, a war that gained our nation’s independence,” Rollins said in a statement. “Protecting and preserving artifacts of our commonwealth’s history is of fundamental importance to this.”
The medals were won in the 1880s and 1890s by Milan Bull and Freeman Bull, who were both part of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia in the late 19th century, but have been missing since at least 1996. How the medals were removed from the site, established in 1777 as a federal arsenal to supply the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, is unclear, but the action notes there was no process for deaccessioning the items from the collection. The daughter and niece of Freeman Bull and Milan Bull donated the medals to the Springfield Armory in 1944.
A civil forfeiture action allows third parties to assert claims to property, which must be resolved before the property can be forfeited to the United States and returned to victims, in this case the Springfield Armory. This action is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Carol E. Head, who heads the office’s Asset Recovery Unit.
The process to recover the medals began in October 2021, when a collector contacted a curator at the Springfield Armory inquiring about them, and their description matched items missing for more than 25 years.
A month later, the FBI was notified, and in February agents seized the medals based on a seizure warrant issued by a U.S. magistrate judge, with Pasquale Morra, an FBI special agent, handling much of the field work. Morra submitted an affidavit related to the civil forfeiture action claiming that the medals were likely “unlawfully removed.”
That affidavit shows that the Tennessee man who bought the medals told the FBI that the seller was based in Massachusetts, and that that person had acquired the medals at a May 2021 gun show “from an elderly individual who lived in Pennsylvania.”
“My office is committed to combating the theft and sale of stolen historical property,” Rollins said. “The recovery of these important artifacts is the result of the excellent collaborative work between my office’s Asset Recovery Unit, the FBI and the National Park Service.”
“These stolen medals that once belonged to world-class marksmen and have been missing for almost 30 years are now one step closer to being returned to their rightful owner,” said Joseph R. Bonavolonta, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston division, in a statement. “Their absence represented not just a physical and financial loss, but a loss to every visitor who missed out on viewing these significant artifacts of military history. The FBI is very proud to have recovered them.”
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
