Quite a story. It also says a lot about how people remember things.
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....:)
I don't think it says so much about the way people remember things as it does about people exaggerating something when they think no one will ever find out the truth. He probably wished he had inscribed the watch with those words and so that is the way he told it. He probably even came to believe it himself after many years of telling it that way.
At least the basic story was correct. Another thing, he may have told the family what he really wrote in the watch and the family added to it over several generations.