Posted on 03/10/2009 3:15:49 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
You ought to read the whole article (balky links notwithstanding). The real inscription did not even mention slavery or refer to slavery at all. The real inscription is written in the last part of the article.
Colonel,
Don’t feel at all bad about it. I’ll wager that not many of us on here have never posted without going through the hassle of trying to use a slow link to an article. I’ve done it myself.
We tend to load others with perfection requirements. That way, we don’t look so bad when we goof up ourselves.
Proudly Posting Without Reading Articles A Lot,
Twinkie
Being Irish, he was cursed with Second Sight and predicted the “slavery issue” conveniently appearing years after the war started.
We’re spooky that way....:)
Time tagger.
Not nearly as exciting, but I have a dictionary I bought at an estate sale — copyright 1890. My 6 year old opened it today and found napkins and leaves. Not a big deal to many, but the dried leaves are probably over a hundred years old and look like they are fragile gold.
Thanks. To err is human and I’m quite human these days. :)
Made In China
I didn’t mean to discourage you. I just meant that you better have a strong stomach before you take a look at a century worth of detritus. But for someone who has dissected owl droppings, I guess that would not be a problem.
Now that will be a message worth having when next that wall gets ripped out!
You didn’t read the article either. That is what the person who wrote the message thought he wrote, not what was actually written. There was quite a span of time between the writing and the remembering.
We did that, too, but we added a New Testament.
We’ve got to stop buying new construction if I’m going to find anything other than a 7-11 cup.
Anyway - this is a cool story. My children are 3rd cousins, 6 times removed from Abe.
Me too, Colonel. I’ve been sick with blood pressure for a while now, bad the past few days and having to get used to more and additional drugs, and my errors are glaring recently. - Oh well, we do the best we can.
Katy and Linda were good friends!
R.E.M.E.M.B.E.R.T.O.D.R.I.N.K.Y.O.U.R.O.V.E.L.T.I.N.E
One neighbor of mine was restoring her 1890's era house and discovered a bunch of old pornography stuffed in the rafters. She donated it to a bookstore in San Francisco!
O.V.A.L.T.I.N.E.
Must be terrible to hate so badly.
the 4-way election with sectionalist division and threats over an outcome of lincoln winning had to be just scary as hell. Not having a seated government had to have been an expected possibility.
The Irish can’t spell...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.