bob, interesting.thanks, bob.one of my relatives was supposed to have been a secretary to abraham lincoln's son , robert. don't think it was a colby. marilyn On 10-Mar-09, at 6:43 PM, RC Colby wrote: > > Hidden Message Found in Lincoln Pocket Watch > > By Neely Tucker > Washington Post Staff Writer > Tuesday, March 10, 2009; 5:40 PM > > For nearly 150 years, Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch has been > rumored to carry a secret message, supposedly written by an Irish > immigrant and watchmaker named Jonathan Dillon. > > Dillon, working in a D.C. watch repair shop in 1861, told family > members that he -- by incredible happenstance -- had been repairing > Lincoln's watch when news came that Fort Sumter had been attacked in > South Carolina. It was the opening salvo of what became the Civil War. > > Dillon told his children (and, half a century later, a reporter for > the New York Times) that he opened the watch's inner workings and > scrawled 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." > > He then closed it up and sent it back to the White House. Lincoln > never knew of the message. Dillon died in 1907. > > The watch, meanwhile, was handed down and eventually given to the > Smithsonian Institution in 1958. It didn't run anymore. No one had > pried open the inner workings in ages. The old watchmaker's tale was > just that. > > And then Douglas Stiles, Dillon's great-great grandson, alerted > Smithsonian officials to the family legend last month. He was a real- > estate attorney in Waukegan, Ill., he explained. He'd heard the > legend around the dinner table as a kid, but had just discovered a > New York Times article from 1906, quoting Dillon as telling the > story himself. > > Truth? Lore? > > Read the rest of the story at: > > http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR2009031001449.html?hpid=topnews > > Bob Colby > > > > ============================= > Colby list archives: > http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index/COLBY/ > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to COLBY-request@rootsweb.com > with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and > the body of the message