For many decades, the descendants of Irish immigrant and watchmaker, Jonathan Dillon, have carried a family story about Dillons having secreted a message within the pocket watch of President Abraham Lincoln. The story was that he just happened to be working on Lincoln’s watch when he heard the news of the firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. He told his children and later a reporter for the New York Times, that he wrote of the attack within the watch – and also added his name and the date. Dillon related that following message was enclosed in the watch: “The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try.” It seems that Lincoln never knew of the message within the watch. Dillon passed away in 1907. The Smithsonian Institution got the no-longer-working watch in 1958. Noone looked inside.
However, last month, Dillon’s great-great grandson, Douglas Stiles, told Smithsonian officials of the family story of the inscription. So, on Tuesday (March 10, 2009) morning, watchmaker George Thomas opened the watch in a small conference room located on the first floor of Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, and sure enough, there was an inscription within. In tiny letters, the following is inscribed: “Jonathan Dillon April 13, 1861. Fort Sumter was attacked by the rebels on the above date. Thank God we have a government.”
Stiles, who was looking on, was thrilled. “That’s Lincoln’s watch,” he said, “and my ancestor wrote graffiti on it!”
Quite a story… I know, it’s not genealogical, but it’s certainly a tiny window into history.
Read more about the Lincoln watch at: