This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX.

I'm Lizzie Peabody.

When he was in his late 20s, Abraham Lincoln decided it was time for a change.

He was going to bust out of the small town where he was living and move to the big city.

Springfield, Illinois.

And he's determined this is the place where he's going to better himself. Lisa Kathleen Grady is a curator of political history at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

He's been a day laborer. He's been under his father's thumb to a certain extent.

He's now going to build a life for himself as a lawyer.

It's the late 1830s, and Lincoln does start to build a life. He meets a woman, gets married,

becomes a lawyer, and he embarks on a pretty successful career. He has his own practice, and one of his clients is a railroad firm,

and he settles a case for them, and he makes a good fee from it.

Lincoln, for the first time ever, has a sizable chunk of change in his pocket,

and he decides to treat himself.

He goes to the finest jeweler in town

and looks at all the pocket watches on display.

Popular watches at the time had intricate floral patterns

or elaborate scenes etched into the gold cases,

some decorated with colored enamel,

inset with pearls or rare gems.

But the watch that catches Lincoln's

eye is a very simple gold watch, with a fine pattern of interlocking lines etched on its case.

And he says, this is the watch. It's right here in the collection at the Smithsonian. It's a round

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