Hidden Message Found in Lincoln Pocket Watch (Abraham Lincoln)

Washington Post ^ | Tuesday, March 10, 2009 | Neely Tucker

[nickcarraway]

For nearly 150 years, Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch has been rumored to carry a secret message, supposedly written by an Irish immigrant and watchmaker named Jonathan Dillon.

Dillon, working in a D.C. watch repair shop in 1861, told family members that he -- by incredible happenstance -- had been repairing Lincoln's watch when news came that Fort Sumter had been attacked in South Carolina. It was the opening salvo of what became the Civil War.

Dillon told his children (and, half a century later, a reporter for the New York Times) that he opened the watch's inner workings and scrawled his name, the date and a message for the ages: "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try."

He then closed it up and sent it back to the White House. Lincoln never knew of the message. Dillon died in 1907.

The watch, meanwhile, was handed down and eventually given to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958. It didn't run anymore. No one had pried open the inner workings in ages. The old watchmaker's tale was just that.

And then Douglas Stiles, Dillon's great-great grandson, alerted Smithsonian officials to the family legend last month. He was a real-estate attorney in Waukegan, Ill., he explained. He'd heard the legend around the dinner table as a kid, but had just discovered a New York Times article from 1906, quoting Dillon as telling the story himself.

Truth? Lore?

This morning, in a small conference room on the first floor of Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, officials decided to find out.

[kalee]

I thought maybe it was a rush to hide it from mom or dad and you might have had a back up plan for getting them out later. I was going to ask for the secret method of retrieval.

[onedoug]

It’s right twice a day.

[kalee]

We buried a time capsule canning jar in 2000. We each made a list of our favorite movies, books and our hopes and dreams for the future.

[sneakers]

Back in the 1960’s, my dad was down in the basement to put coal in the furnace. He started poking around in the wooden beams (tree trunks - bark still on them! after almost 200 years!) and found an 1894 almanac. We’ve found lots of stuff down through the years.

[jmax]

There REALLY was a message in the watch. It read, as follows:

"I WILL FREE THE SLAVES, VICE SENDING THEM BACK TO AFRICA, BECAUSE I KNOW THAT ONE DAY THERE WILL BE A NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION."

[IrishPennant]

Sorry - Just imagine that is you looking down :)

[Right Wing Assault]

my husband who always puts secret messages/photos in our walls

Found writing on the back of some 60-year-old plaster (actually real plaster over drywall) in my bathroom. Something like, "Carl, the cloths shute is being made and will be ready soon." How 'bout the "cloths shute" spelling?

[Charlespg]

There is aways somebody on these kinds threads waving the bloody shirt

"Any reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and that until it was convenient to make a pretence that sympathy with him was the cause of the war, it hated the abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale… As to Secession being Rebellion, it is distinctly possible by state papers that Washington considered it no such thing – that Massachusetts, now loudest against it, has itself asserted its right to secede, again and again."-- Said to be made by Charles Dickens

[GVnana]

Thank God we have a President who at least will try

This 20th century vernacular would not have been used. (In the olden days, kiddies, presidents were not celebrities.)

[kalee]

Looks more like Bette Davis in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte or that crazy woman in Sunset Blvd. lol

[Between the Lines]

At least the watch was right today. Twice!

But neither time that the watch was right did it mention slavery.

[bimboeruption]

When we gutted the kitchen of our 1804 farmhouse in 1998, I left a letter in a canning jar and placed it in the wall above a door. My husband, son and mom and I signed it. I told the future residents what a terrible president Clinton was!!! LOL!!

I love you, sneakers!

[SunkenCiv]

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[Red Boots]

When my late in-laws remodeled their cabin high in the Colorado Rockies, they found old letters stuffed in the walls as insulation, along with old newspapers.

One was a letter from a miner to his sister in California, about their new farm there and how he hoped to join them soon. I think they were from the 1920's.

[lafroste]

LOL. No, I put them down an old chimney that had been partially demolished years before. I knew there was no going back.

[awake-n-angry]

I once stayed in a 19th century bed-n-breakfast in Indiana that had been refurbished by the owners. Upon painting and papering, they found a message under the original paper that instead of papering over, they framed in place for all to see. The message was, “Everyone said that they would come help, but we were the only one who showed. Katy and Linda July 17 1881.”

Sort of cool.

[stockpirate]

Nice find, and thanks.

Now we find our country in difficult times yet again.

Obama, you have written graffti on my constitution.

[Gordon Greene]

Ping

[Eagles6]

"Beware the one from the dark continent, This pretender is not one of us. His words are wan light, a false dawn, while his soul and acts are of the darkest night".

[b9]

You're right. THIS was the actual statement they found in the watch:

"Jonathan Dillon April 13, 1861. Fort Sumter was attacked by the rebels on the above date. Thank God we have a government."