The blue box had a hint of green, almost recalling Tiffany Blue, a color introduced by the jeweler in 1845. Yet this inconspicuous box was circa 1880s, rectangular with smooth, rounded corners, covered with velvet, and lined with blue silk.
Laura Cinturati, a national-park ranger outfitted in her government-issued gray-and-greens, took a breath as we opened the front metal clasp. Inside was a silk-covered divider with two blue ribbons. What we found as we lifted the divider altered much of what we know about Theodore Roosevelt and his first, lost wife, Alice Hathaway Lee.
