HRRABRAHAM LINCOLN WAS NOT AN OUTWARDLY VAIN man, but in the late 1850s he decided to purchase a fine gold watch from George Chatterton, a jeweler in Springfield, Illinois. It was probably the singlemost expensive personal item Lincoln had bought for himself. Acquired when his law practice was flourishing, this watch, consisting of an English lever movement inside an American case, was a conspicuous symbol of his success.
After arriving in Washington, D.C., Lincoln sent his watch for repair to M. W. Galt & Company on Pennsylvania Avenue. Jonathan Dillon, a young watchmaker who was by his own account the only Union sympathizer in the shop, had just completed his work on the timepiece when news of the attack on Fort Sumter reached Washington on April 13, 1861. Dillon recalled that unsettling day in an interview published in the New York Times in 1906 when he was eighty-four years old: “I was working upstairs when Mr. Galt came up. He was much excited, and gasped: ‘Dillon, war has begun; the first shot has been fired.’ At that moment I had in my hand Abraham Lincoln’s watch, which I had been repairing.… I unscrewed the dial, and with a sharp instrument wrote on the metal beneath.” In the excitement of the moment, Dillon recorded the news and his support for Lincoln. He scratched across the inside plate, “Jonathan Dillon / April 13–1861 / Fort Sumpter was attacked / by the rebels on the above / date J Dillon” and “April 13–1861 / Washington / thank God we have a government / Jonth Dillon.” In the following years, other watchmakers also left behind notes. In 1864 L. E. Gross signed his name, and at some point a Southern supporter wrote “Jeff Davis” across one of the metal pieces. It is unlikely the Lincoln ever knew about the messages that he carried in his pocket. If he did, he certainly would have had the name of his Confederate rival removed.
In 1958 Lincoln’s great-grandson, Lincoln Isham, donated the timepiece to the Smithsonian. The museum’s staff never needed to remove the dial, and the inscriptions on the inner workings remained hidden. As years passed, the unconfirmed story was known only within Dillon’s family. In 2009 Dillon’s great-great-grandson, Doug Stiles, contacted the museum to see if anyone knew of the existence of the watch or had heard of the story that his ancestor had often recounted. On March 10, 2009, the museum arranged to have the dial removed. Before a small gathering of Dillon family members, reporters, and staff members, the watch’s movements were taken out of their case, and Doug Stiles was invited to be the first to read the words inscribed on the fateful day. HRR
April 13–1861 / Washington / thank God we have a government
Jonth Dillon
MESSAGE IN LINCOLN’S WATCH
MESSAGES UNCOVERED Nothing on the surface of Lincoln’s watch (FIRST IMAGE) indicated that those who repaired it had left messages. Not until its interior was exposed (SECOND IMAGE) could one see the inscriptions made by Jonathan Dillon in 1861 and other watchmakers—one who signed his name in 1864 and another who wrote “Jeff Davis.”
