Did Time Capsule Contain Hidden Messages?
- Robert Thomson
- Jul 12
- 6 min read
On July 4, 1976, Americans put on a 200th birthday show for the world. Millions saw the tall ships enter New York Harbor amid a blast of boat horns. That evening, a vast audience watched as Arthur Fiedler electrified the Boston Esplanade with “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
A lucky few will recall that before an afternoon crowd estimated at 2,000 outside the Wing School, two Sandwich selectmen and the town clerk opened and examined one of the nation’s first time capsules, boxed for them after the Centennial celebration of 1876.
They ceremoniously removed the screws from the green wooden box top and then, according to the Village Broadsider, struggled to pry off yet another lid, a tin one.
As sunlight hit the contents of the Centennial Box for the first time in a century, local historian Russell A. Lovell Jr. stood by to provide the color commentary. In one photo, he holds up an 1860s edition of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, a New York City publication.
Maybe Lovell squints from the sunlight or the newspaper’s tiny typeface, or maybe he’s just a bit puzzled.
Lovell knew a committee took more than a year to pack the Centennial Box before launching it on a mission to inform the future about 19th century life in our town.
He also knew Leslie’s newspaper was renowned for its words and images about the American Civil War and many other events of national significance. But the committee’s assignment was to tell the story of Sandwich, not the Battle of Gettysburg.
Yet the pages of Leslie’s newspaper turned out to be typical of the Centennial Box: Lots of out-of-town text.
What were they thinking?
“Gentlemen,” begins their cover letter to the selectmen of 1976:
"At a meeting of the citizens of Sandwich July 4, 1876 just one hundred years since the old bell in Philadelphia announced the Nation’s Birth, we were appointed a committee to collect and enclose in a tin box all such items and circumstances that we thought might be interesting to those who one hundred years hence shall be engaged in the busy scenes of life and occupy the places we now enjoy."
In fairness, that was a big job for a small box. But for all the thousands of words on hundreds of pages inside, the committee left us few clues on why most items were chosen.
The chief packer, prominent businessman C.C.P. Waterman, had a lot of local, national and international newspapers at his disposal. But why did the out-of-towners make the cut?
The box wasn’t all text, but it still wasn’t all Sandwich. Among a small number of photographs was a portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes. There’s no explanation of why future residents of Sandwich should thank the Centennial Box committee for sharing what the 19th president of the United States looked like.
Here’s a theory: Many boxed items did double duty. If we add the indirect messages to the directly stated ones, the contents reveal more about how the townspeople saw themselves, the rest of the world and us.
Let’s start with the salutation on the committee’s letter: “Gentlemen.” It was a man’s world then, as Lovell would write in his critical assessment, and the senders expected it would remain so.
The entire time capsule mission exuded confidence in the stability of government and society in the United States and the town of Sandwich.
The only hedge is on the envelope that enclosed the letter. The committee addressed it “To the Selectmen of the Town of Sandwich.” But in the lower left corner, they added, “or mayor.” Apparently, they allowed that the form of government might change, but not the gender of its leaders.
These men of Sandwich felt that they were in a good place, and that we would be, too.
“It is with great pleasure we review the nation’s growth during the past century, and we doubt not the coming one at its close will exhibit as bright and glorious a career as the past.”
It’s possible they were just trying to be supportive in their one chance to communicate with us. But on this point, the box itself is the message: They took the time and trouble to assemble a 100-year time capsule to hold their messages. Then they stored it in Town Hall, a wooden building by a low-lying body of water.
That’s a wordless message of sublime confidence in the future.
Yet they also wanted us to understand they’d seen fire and rain.
“We have passed through one of the most severe struggles that any Nation ever experienced which will be seen by some scenes in the pictorials we enclose. It was a severe trial of the patriotism of those who love the cause of freedom and their Country’s weal.”
But if they were optimists about their country’s welfare, why did they think the future would need old newspapers hidden in a small-town time capsule to reveal the turmoil of Civil War and the wider swath of 19th century history?
Archivist Jen Ratliff, the keeper of the time capsule at the Sandwich Public Library, offered a theory about something else the senders might have wanted us to understand without explicitly stating: Our town may have been small, but it wasn’t Hicksville.
Massachusetts communities evaluated each other and guarded their own status. Salem mocked Lynn for underperforming in Centennial celebration. Meanwhile, some Cape Codders remained miffed over Henry David Thoreau’s widely read descriptions of their rusticism.
Access to a broad range of newspapers was evidence that the people of Sandwich were at home in the world. So was some of the personal writing enclosed in the capsule.
Ebenezer Nye, a resident of Pocasset, which was then part of Sandwich, was invited to contribute an essay, which he titled “STATISTICS OF POCASSET, ETC.”
After three and a half paragraphs about Pocasset history, he got to the lengthier ETC. part:
"Looking abroad we have the grand centennial exhibition at Philadelphia represented by nearly all the civilized nations of the earth. Some of the States of Mexico as usual are in a state of insurrection. In the island of Cuba the insurgents for six years in arms still hold their ground. Central and South American states quiet."
His world survey continued, then Nye circled back to the Civil War:
“That cruel and disastrous war accomplished the abolition of slavery but did not humble the proud spirits of the slave holder sufficiently to allow the enfranchised black man equal rights with the white citizen to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’”
It was important to the senders for us to know that they knew.
The letter from the 1876 box committee to the 1976 selectmen concluded with a statement that smacks of establishment pride while evoking an aspiration for their time, and ours:
"We now stand a nation honored and respected by all lovers of human rights throughout this inhabitable globe."
“We now stand a nation honored and respected by all lovers of human rights throughout this inhabitable globe.”
This is the third in a series of three articles on Sandwich's Centennial Box. Read more about the box and its contents in "When Sandwich Put History in a Box" (Part 1) and "Time Capsule Delivers Blast From the Past" (Part 2).
Bob Thomson is a member of the Friends of the Sandwich Town Archives, a dedicated, all-volunteer, 501(c)(3) nonprofit committed to supporting and promoting the archives’ collections and the rich, diverse history of the town of Sandwich.
My Ancestor John (trout) Denison, was a well known trapper and guide in sandwich. He guided Grover Cleveland and John Fesenden (spel) on many trapping and hunting trips.