I was just sort of randomly surfing today and stumbled upon this little nugget:
For nearly 150 years, Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch has been rumored to carry a secret message, allegedly written by an Irish immigrant and watchmaker named Jonathan Dillon. It sounds like a plot premise for "National Treasure 3," but it was real, or at least a real legend, and it went like this:
Dillon told family members that he was working in M.W. Galt and Co.'s jewelry shop on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1861. By incredible happenstance, he said he was repairing Lincoln's watch when the shop owner burst in with news that Fort Sumter in South Carolina had been attacked. It was the opening salvo of the Civil War.
Dillon told his family (and, four decades later, a reporter for the New York Times) that he opened the watch's inner workings, etched 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."
For the lazy, it turns out its true...but not quite what the old coot remembered. Check it out, fun story.
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