Freelance Historian

Posted By Steven on March 11, 2009

National Public Radio reports on a family legend about Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War that turns out to be true!

Watchmaker Jonathan Dillon as an old man told his family that he had been employed at a Washington DC jewelry store in 1861, when the recently-elected President sent his favorite pocket watch in for repair:

Dillon told his family that as he held the watch in his hands, the store’s owner rushed up and shouted, “Dillon, war has begun.” Dillon was a Unionist — he lived in a city that bordered the South but was loyal to the North and the federal government — and as the story goes, he brashly opened the watch and secretly engraved the words: “The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try.”

Or words to that effect, Dillon told his family. And in 1906, Dillon, by then an elderly man, also told his tale to a reporter from The New York Times.

Doug Stiles, Dillion’s great grandson, was researching his family history when he came across the story in the New York Times (apparently the story had been forgotten by the family.)  He tracked down where the watch was now- the Smithsonian- and asked the curator if the story was true.  No one there had heard of the story, and no one had opened the 150 year-old watch, so it was decided to find out if there actually was a secret message in Lincoln’s watch, inscribed upon the dawn of the Civil War:

Smithsonian officials invited a group of journalists to bear witness as a master watchmaker carefully opened Lincoln’s watch to the inner workings. When he spied scribbles lightly engraved onto the back of the watch face, he handed the magnifying goggles to Stiles — so he could have the honor of being perhaps the first man to read them in almost 150 years.

“Jonathan Dillon April 13-1861 Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date. J Dillon,” his great-great-grandfather had written, followed by “April 13-1861 Washington. Thank God we have a government. Jonth Dillon.”

The inscription wasn’t precisely the way Dillon remembered it when telling the tale to family. But the moral still holds: Sometimes tall tales are true.

More photos and the complete story at  NPR’s “All Things Considered”.

Category: Old Stuff in the News
Tags: Civil War, Lincoln, watch