All that Stiles had to offer was a bit of family lore and a newspaper article written 45 years after the fact. Stiles is also Dillon's great, great grandson. The caller was Douglas Stiles, a 59-year-old attorney and genealogy expert, from Waukegan, Illinois. It was February 12, Lincoln's 200th birthday, when the phone on Rubenstein's desk rang. And so we must pause here to reflect on one. Lincoln was not outwardly vain, but the fine gold watch was a conspicuous symbol of his success as a prominent Illinois lawyer. Lincoln's English gold watch was purchased in the 1850s from George Chatterton, a Springfield, Illinois, jeweler.

He's carrying a very visible statement of his own success.' One of the status symbols of the 19th century is a gold watch. 'When you think about Lincoln especially at this point in his life,' Rubenstein says, 'his ill-fitting clothes and mussy hair he doesn't seem to care about his appearance.Д«ut in fact, he does care about how people perceive him. Harry Rubenstein, chief curator of the museum's 2010 exhibition 'Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life,' has a fondness for the watch, which today would be the equivalent of a high-end Bulova or Tag Heuer. And Lincoln would never know that he carried Dillon's secret message in his pocket. The watchmaker and the President would never meet. It was a rare moment when a museum, dedicated to the preservation of American history, could be said to be making history. News of the message inside Lincoln's pocket watch made every local broadcast and the front page of the New York Times. Dillon's message was there, but not exactly as he later described it. On March 10, 2009, at the National Museum of American History, some 40 reporters and Smithsonian staff witnessed master craftsman and jeweler George Thomas of the Towson Watch Company open Abraham Lincoln's watch to search for Dillon's secret message. Thank God we have a President who at least will try.'' I unscrewed the dial, and with a sharp instrument wrote on the metal beneath: вЂThe first gun is fired.

'I was in the act of screwing on the dial when Mr. Forty-five years later, Dillon told the New York Times what he did that day. jewelers in Washington, D.C., was repairing President Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch, when he heard of the attack. On April 13, 1861, Irish immigrant and watchmaker Jonathan Dillon, working for the M.W. In 2009, a stunning find unveiled a personal record that touched the highest levels of government-but had remained hidden for nearly a century and a half. Yet, no one alive today can recall the tragic day in 1861 when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, beginning a terrible and tragic war that divided this nation and changed it forever. Kennedy was assassinated or the events of September 11. It has been in the safe custody of the Smithsonian Institution since 1958-a gift from Lincoln's great-grandson Lincoln Isham.Д®very living soul can recall with certainty what they were doing when a national tragedy occurs-the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the day in Dallas when John F. Lincoln's watch is a fine gold timepiece that the 16th president purchased in the 1850s from a Springfield, Illinois jeweler.

Where to watch the message