Many attic spaces in old homes all over the country hold treasures and keepsakes from long years past. In most cases, decades past. I remember the attic of the home I grew up in through the 1950s and '60s. There were many long, lost family heirlooms stored up there collecting dust. Items such as an old Edison Victrola with an old suitcase full of the cylinder style records. There was an old stereoscope viewer with boxes and boxes of picture slides, old coal oil lamps, some pieces of furniture, old 1920s and '30s clothing in an old truck, family photographs taken a century before and a book about the Titanic written in 1912. And there were a couple of old shotguns, the type that had hammers. They were called Stagecoach Guns. Where all this stuff came from...and who it all came from, was a family mystery that I never solved. But, at least, I was pretty sure none of it was stolen...pretty sure!

This blog is about an attic find like no other. Imagine searching an attic and finding a collection of old antique firearms, and then finding out that these guns are historical artifacts once stolen from historical museums. And that they were stolen over 50-years ago. Well, that's what happened. It's a prime example that sometimes the truth can be stranger that fiction.