Agoramania Soap Box
Time Capsule from our Founding Fathers Found!
1795 Time Capsule Opened, Centuries after Revere and Adams Buried It
By Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Updated 12:23 AM ET, Wed January 7, 2015
(CNN)More than 200 years after Samuel Adams and Paul Revere first buried it in Boston, it took an hour to remove all the objects crammed inside a tiny time capsule.
Onlookers anxiously watched the unveiling Tuesday, worrying the items might not have weathered the years very well.
"Could we actually go through the whole box, or would things prove too fragile to take out?" said Malcolm Rogers, director of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. "It was like brain surgery, with history looking down on us."
Piece by piece, Pam Hatchfield, head of objects conservation for the museum, removed each item, whispering "wow" as she first caught a glimpse of some of them.
Among the stash Hatchfield removed from the 1795 time capsule: Five folded newspapers, a Massachusetts commonwealth seal, a title page from Massachusetts colony records and at least 24 coins.
And at the bottom, an inscribed rectangular silver plate, "probably made by Paul Revere and engraved by him," Rogers said.
"That was the treasure at the end," he said.
But getting to it was a painstaking process.
It took seven hours to remove the time capsule from the Massachusetts State House in December, and more than four hours before Tuesday evening's ceremony for officials to loosen the screws that were holding it shut.
Porcupine quill, dental tool used to remove contents
At the broadcast event, which took place at the museum in front of a painting of George Washington, Hatchfield used a porcupine quill and her grandfather's dental tool to help her safely remove the contents of the 10-pound box, which was uncovered during repairs for a water leak at the State House last month.
The box-shaped capsule was placed in the State House cornerstone in 1795 by Revere, the metalsmith, engraver and Revolutionary War hero; Adams, the brewer and governor of Massachusetts; and William Scollay, a local developer, when construction began. Revere was responsible for overlaying the State House dome with copper.
The time capsule measured 5.5 x 7.5 x 1.5 inches, officials said.
It's not the first time the box has been uncovered. In 1855, during some other repairs, the time capsule was removed and its contents cleaned, only to be put back in the cornerstone for almost 160 years -- with a few objects added. The box's materials were noted in reports of the time.
But this time, historians have had the opportunity to go through the contents with modern tools. After its removal December 11, the box was taken to the Museum of Fine Arts, X-rayed and given a thorough once-over.
Having an idea about what might be inside was nothing compared to actually seeing it, Rogers told CNN.
"Though we knew a little bit about what was in the box, it was a moment of extraordinary excitement as this brass container just the size of a cigar box was slowly opened with surgical precision, and you suddenly found yourself in the presence of history," he said.
Newspapers inside the box were in "amazingly good condition," Hatchfield said.
The large number of copper coins inside might have helped protect the artifacts, she said, since copper helps block the growth of fungus.
The collection of coins recovered from the time capsule included half-cent, one-cent, half-dime, 10-cent and 25-cent coins. Another set of coins included a pine tree shilling from 1652 and a copper medal showing George Washington.
"This is the most exciting project I've ever worked on," a beaming Hatchfield told the crowd after she finished pulling out all of the box's contents, describing how thrilling it was to be part of building a bridge between the past and the present.
"This is what we, as conservators, live for," she said, sharing a fist bump with Michael Comeau, executive director of the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum.
Going forward, conservators will work on preserving items removed from the time capsule.
They might not unfold the newspapers, Hatchfield said, in order to protect them.
If they were to go up for sale, the objects inside the box would fetch a pretty penny -- not because they're rare, but because of the history behind them, said Sebastian Clarke, an appraiser for the PBS program "Antiques Roadshow."
"The story's fantastic. George Washington was still the president of this country until 1797. ... The 17th century coin is maybe a 5 or 6,000-dollar coin, but with this story, the value increases tenfold," he said.
Experts say they haven't been able to confirm whether Paul Revere made the silver plate, which commemorates the placement of the legislature's cornerstone by Adams and Revere on July 4, 1795.
If Revere did make it, Clarke said, "the value has to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's magnificent."
But don't expect to see these objects showing up at any auction.
After the conservation process is finished, they'll go on display at the museum. And eventually, the time capsule and its contents will be placed again in the cornerstone of the Massachusetts State House, said William F. Galvin, secretary of the commonwealth.
One question still remains, Galvin said: Will officials add anything new to the time capsule before they put it back?
"The governor has wisely suggested that we might," he said, "so we'll think about it."
Today marks the 225th anniversary of the national Thanksgiving holiday proclaimed by George Washington, as a way to give thanks for the Constitution, and honor religious and civil liberty.
Before 1789, Thanksgiving had been observed in different ways in different regions. And during the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress issued various proclamations – several a year at one point – for national days of prayer and giving thanks, usually in November and December.
President Washington had been asked by the First Congress in September 1789 to issue a proclamation from the new government under the Constitution after the lawmakers debated and passed a resolution introduced by Elias Boudinot of New Jersey in the House.
The resolution asked, “That a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States, to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.”
Five members of the First Congress, including Boudinot, approached Washington with the idea, and the President issued the proclamation (the second in presidential history) on October 3, 1789.
President Washington sent the Thanksgiving Proclamation to the states’ governors and asked for the leaders to make sure it was posted and published for all to see.
“I must request the favor of you to have published and made known in your State in the way and manner that shall be most agreeable to yourself,” he wrote.
The Thanksgiving Proclamation came two years before the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, but its tone and message is remindful of the constitutional protections of liberty in all forms that the Founders had fought for and later enshrined in Philadelphia in 1787.
Washington said he wanted the people to be thankful “for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed.”
The proclamation also makes it clear that the Thanksgiving Day, in Washington’s opinion, should be a day of prayer, especially for lawmakers and government officials.
“We may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other trangressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed,” Washington asked.
The President established “Thursday, the 26th day of November next” as the Thanksgiving Day. In subsequent years, several other Presidents issued proclamations infrequently.
It was President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 who issued the next major Thanksgiving Day proclamation, and every President since Lincoln has issued an annual proclamation.
“I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens,” Lincoln said.
from the National Constitution Center
Happy Mother's Day!
Some Mother's Day Figures:
• In the United States, there are about 82.5 million mothers. (source: US Census Bureau)
• about 96% of American consumers take part in some way in Mother's Day (source: Hallmark)
• Mother's Day is widely reported as the peak day of the year for long distance telephone calls
• There are more than 23,000 florists in the United States with a total of more than 125,000 employees. Colombia is the leading foreign supplier of cut flowers and fresh flower buds to the US. California produces two-thirds of domestic production of cut flowers. (source: US Census Bureau)
• Mother's Day is the busiest day of the year for many restaurants
• Retailers report that Mother's Day is the second highest gift-giving holiday in the United States (Christmas is the highest).
• Most popular month for having babies in the US is August, and most popular weekday is Tuesday. (source: US Census Bureau)
• about twice as many young women were childfree in the year 2000 as in the 1950s (source: Ralph Fevre, The Guardian, Manchester, March 26, 2001)
• In the US, 82% of women ages 40-44 are mothers. This compares to 90% in 1976. (source: US Census Bureau)
• In Utah and Alaska, women on the average will have three children before the end of their childbearing years. Overall, the average in the United States is two. (source: US Census Bureau)
• In 2002, the 55% of American women with infant children were in the workforce, compared to 31% in 1976, and down from 59% in 1998. In 2002, there were 5.4 million stay-at-home mothers in the US. (source: US Census Bureau)