What secret message did a watchmaker hide inside Lincoln's pocket watch?

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TL;DR

On April 13, 1861, Irish immigrant watchmaker Jonathan Dillon was repairing Lincoln's gold pocket watch at M.W. Galt and Co. on Pennsylvania Avenue when he heard that Fort Sumter had been attacked. He unscrewed the dial and scratched a secret patriotic message into the brass beneath. Lincoln never knew it was there. The Smithsonian confirmed the inscription on March 10, 2009 — 148 years after Dillon put it there.

On April 13, 1861, Irish immigrant watchmaker Jonathan Dillon was at his bench inside M.W. Galt and Co. jewelers on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., repairing President Lincoln's English gold pocket watch. When the shop owner burst in to announce that Confederate forces had attacked Fort Sumter, Dillon did something impulsive and extraordinary: he unscrewed the watch's dial, took a sharp instrument to the brass plate beneath, and engraved a private message to history. Lincoln carried it in his pocket for the remaining four years of his life without ever knowing it was there.

A gold watch, a jewelry shop, and the first shot of the Civil War

Lincoln had purchased his watch in the 1850s from George Chatterton, a jeweler in Springfield, Illinois. The watch was an English gold hunting-case timepiece — not outwardly ornate, but a conspicuous symbol of Lincoln's rise from frontier poverty to successful prairie lawyer. By the time he reached the presidency, it was one of his most personal possessions.

When Lincoln's watch needed repair in April 1861, it went to M.W. Galt and Co. on Pennsylvania Avenue, a few blocks from the White House. Jonathan Dillon, then working there as a watchmaker, was the man who took it in hand. Dillon had immigrated to America from Waterford, Ireland in the 1840s and found work in Washington's watch trade. On the morning of April 13, he had the watch open on his bench — mid-repair, dial loosened — when the shop owner came rushing in.

Confederate forces had fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, the previous day. The news had reached Washington. The Civil War had begun.

What Dillon actually engraved — and what he later claimed he wrote

Dillon's reaction was to pick up a sharp tool and scratch words into the brass movement beneath the dial. He signed his name, noted the date, recorded the news, and sealed the watch back up. Lincoln's watch went back to the White House. The president, as far as anyone has ever been able to determine, never once opened the case and read what was inside.

Forty-five years later, in April 1906, an 84-year-old Dillon told the New York Times what he had done that day. His account was vivid: he claimed to have written, in part, "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try." It was a bold, prophetic statement — and it was not quite what was actually on the brass.

When master craftsman George Thomas of the Towson Watch Company opened the watch before 40 reporters and Smithsonian staff on March 10, 2009, the actual inscription read:

"Jonathan Dillon April 13-1861 Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date J Dillon April 13-1861 Washington thank God we have a government Jonth Dillon."

No mention of slavery. No prediction about Lincoln's fitness for the job. What Dillon had actually scratched, hurriedly, between the tiny gears of a pocket watch, was a plain statement of fact and a single line of relief: thank God we have a government. The grandiose version he recalled four decades later said more about Dillon's memory — or his pride — than about what had actually happened in that shop in 1861. Doris Kearns Goodwin's definitive study of Lincoln's political genius gives essential context for understanding the nation's fractured mood in those first hours of war — and why an Irish immigrant in Washington might have felt compelled to leave his own mark on history.

The inscription split into three sections to navigate the gears

The physical challenge of what Dillon did is worth pausing on. Watch movements of the 1850s were dense mechanical assemblies of gears, springs, and levers occupying almost every millimeter of the brass plate beneath the dial. Dillon had to split his inscription into three separate sections just to navigate around the watch's working parts. The handwriting, visible only under magnification, was cramped into the available spaces — a physical constraint that partly explains why the final result was more abbreviated than the heroic words he would later recall.

Dillon died in 1907, one year after his New York Times interview. The watch passed eventually to the Smithsonian in 1958, donated by Lincoln Isham, Lincoln's great-grandson. It sat in the collection — confirmed to exist, its possible interior contents unexamined — until Doug Stiles, Dillon's great-great-grandson, stumbled on the 1906 newspaper article while searching online, and contacted the museum in early 2009. Smithsonian curators, it turned out, had never looked behind the dial. They had no idea the inscription might be there.

A second inscription — and the name "Jeff Davis"

Dillon was not the only person who had left a private mark inside Lincoln's watch. When George Thomas removed the movement in 2009, he found a second inscription: "LE Grofs Sept 1864 Wash DC" — another watchmaker who had apparently repaired the watch three years later, just months before Lincoln was assassinated. And scratched across one of the brass levers was the name "Jeff Davis" — Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. Who put it there, and why, remains unknown. Perhaps a repair technician with Confederate sympathies. Perhaps something else entirely. The watch had passed through multiple hands during the war years, and not all of them were loyal to the Union cause.

The presence of Davis's name alongside Dillon's pro-Union message makes Lincoln's pocket watch a stranger, more layered object than it first appears: a small gold case that somehow contained, unknown to its owner, the divided loyalties of a fractured nation. Douglas L. Wilson's close study of how Lincoln shaped his words during the war years, Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words, explores the same compressed, high-stakes world of private marks left on public history — and is the best companion read for anyone absorbed in this story.

148 years of silence, confirmed in a room of 40 people

The opening of Lincoln's watch on March 10, 2009, was a public event — 40 spectators, including Dillon's descendants and members of the press, watched on a monitor as Thomas used tweezers, tiny pliers, and a magnifying visor to pry off the face and reveal the brass beneath. When the inscription appeared, Doug Stiles was invited to read it aloud. He said later, simply: "It's there."

The story made the front page of the New York Times the next day. Brent D. Glass, then director of the National Museum of American History, put it plainly: "Lincoln never knew of the message he carried in his pocket. It's a personal side of history about an ordinary watchman being inspired to record something for posterity."

The watch remains at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. If you want to walk the same Pennsylvania Avenue blocks where Dillon worked — and stand in front of the theater where Lincoln was shot four years after receiving his watch back — Viator's Lincoln Assassination small-group walking tour covers the key sites of those final days, from the White House to Ford's Theatre and Petersen House. For the Smithsonian itself, a guided tour of the National Museum of American History gives you expert context for the collection that holds Lincoln's watch, top hat, and dozens of other artifacts from his presidency.

Why did professional watchmakers record inscriptions inside watches at all?

During the 18th and 19th centuries, it was common practice for watchmakers to leave small identifying marks inside a watch movement when they worked on it — a name, a date, a brief note. These marks served as professional records, legible only to the next craftsman who opened the case. Dillon was not doing anything unusual in leaving his name and the date. What was unusual was the content: a political statement, written in a moment of shock, addressed to no one and read by no one for nearly 150 years.

It is one of the odder qualities of the story that the message was never intended for Lincoln. Dillon almost certainly knew that Lincoln himself would never read it. Watches of this type were opened only by other watchmakers. What Dillon was doing, in some sense, was writing for the future — for the next repair technician, decades or centuries later, who would unscrew the dial and find his words still there. In that respect, at least, the message worked exactly as intended.

Frequently asked questions

What did the inscription inside Lincoln's pocket watch actually say?

The verified inscription, confirmed by the Smithsonian on March 10, 2009, reads: "Jonathan Dillon April 13-1861 Fort Sumpter [sic] was attacked by the rebels on the above date J Dillon April 13-1861 Washington thank God we have a government Jonth Dillon." Dillon misspelled Fort Sumter and wrote the date as April 13, which was the day the news reached Washington — the attack itself had occurred on April 12.

Why did Dillon's 1906 account differ from what was actually engraved?

When Dillon told the New York Times in 1906 what he had written, he was 84 years old and recalling an event from 45 years earlier. His remembered version — "The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try" — was more eloquent and politically pointed than the actual inscription. The discrepancy is most likely the result of memory softening and reshaping over decades, with Dillon unconsciously substituting the words he wished he had written for the ones he had scratched in haste.

Who else left inscriptions inside Lincoln's pocket watch?

At least two other people left marks inside the watch. A watchmaker identified as "LE Grofs" left an inscription dated September 1864, indicating the watch was repaired again that year. On one of the brass levers, the name "Jeff Davis" — Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy — was also found scratched by an unknown hand, possibly a repair technician with Confederate sympathies.

Where is Lincoln's pocket watch today?

The watch is held by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., where it has been since 1958. It was donated that year by Lincoln Isham, Lincoln's great-grandson. The museum is open to the public, free of charge, on the National Mall.

How did the Smithsonian find out about the inscription?

In early 2009, Doug Stiles — Jonathan Dillon's great-great-grandson, from Waukegan, Illinois — found the 1906 New York Times article about Dillon's claim while searching online. He contacted the Smithsonian's curator of political history, Harry Rubenstein, who confirmed that the museum had never actually looked behind the watch's dial. Stiles's tip prompted the museum to arrange the public opening of the watch in March 2009.

Did Lincoln ever know about the message?

There is no evidence that Lincoln ever opened the watch's inner movement and read the inscription. Dillon himself told the New York Times in 1906 that to his knowledge no one, including Lincoln, had ever seen it. The Smithsonian's director, Brent D. Glass, confirmed the same conclusion after the 2009 opening. The inscription remained hidden for Lincoln's entire presidency and for 148 years afterward.

Where is M.W. Galt and Co., where Dillon worked in 1861?

M.W. Galt and Co. was a jeweler and watchmaker located on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., just a few blocks from the White House. The original building no longer stands in its 1861 form, but Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol remains one of Washington's central thoroughfares, and the route Dillon would have walked is essentially the same route traced by Lincoln's presidential history today.