Time Capsule Delivers Blast From the Past
- Robert Thomson
- Jul 11
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 15
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Waterman – solid, steady and sober – was a leading man in 19th century Sandwich. Deming Jarves, founder of the famous glass factory, relied on Waterman. He was trusted in town governance circles and respected for his temperance.
He also liked to collect newspapers. Old newspapers. Lots of old newspapers.
That was painfully obvious to Russell A. Lovell Jr. as he sifted through the contents of the 1876 Centennial Box, opened before his eyes in the Bicentennial ceremony of July 4, 1976.
For years, the Sandwich historian had looked forward to examining the mystery-shrouded interior of one of America’s first time capsules, conceived by the townspeople to mark the 100th birthday of the nation.
After its opening outside the Wing School, Lovell wrote: “Easily 90% of the bulk of the Box were CCP’s contribution, and most of these were newspapers.”
Lovell apparently didn’t mean this as a compliment. He went on to say in his Village Broadsider story that many papers were “clipped and torn, and probably pulled from a large pile to fill the space.”
Lovell grouped the contents of the Centennial Box into 20 categories and ranked their historical value. Toward the bottom of the list: “About 100 local newspapers dating from 1870 to 1877 when the box was closed.”
Even lower, listed next to last under Items of Little Value as Already Saved Elsewhere: “Newspapers from London, Boston, New York etc.”
It’s not just the newspapers. The Centennial Box contents are heavy on books, town reports, letters, essays, articles and transcriptions. It’s a word-fest compiled by three of the town’s elder statesmen, most prominently Waterman (1801-1884). Lovell’s reaction to many items ranged from meh to outright scorn.
In his history book, Sandwich: A Cape Cod Town, Lovell’s frustration boils over: “In sum, it was an old men’s Box. There was nothing from a woman, nothing from a child, nothing from a teacher or a minister. No objects of clothing, no toy, no glass, no sewing work, no handicraft.”
Was this pile of paper to be the legacy of one of the men who made Sandwich?
Having examined the contents of the Centennial Box with the patient assistance of Town Archivist Jen Ratliff, I humbly say, “Not so fast.” Lovell’s criticism is mostly on target, but he himself spotted the gems among the pulp.
Let’s zoom to the top of Lovell’s lengthy inventory, to the first of three listings under “Completely Unexpected Items.” There we find “Description of lightning striking a barn in 1873, and a bag of the burned earth and nails from the spot.”
This handwritten relic of a remarkable day in Sandwich was brought to us across the century by C.C.P. Waterman.
In the euphoria of the 1876 Centennial celebration, townspeople had tasked Waterman and his two colleagues on the Centennial Box committee with propelling forward a vision of 19th century Sandwich.
What did this man in his mid-70s, this leading businessman and sobriety advocate, want to include – along with the pile of newspapers – so a distant generation could imagine his times?
Of all the many thousands of days in his long life, he chose to describe the summer day when “liquid fire” tumbled from two colliding clouds and incinerated Nathan Nye’s barn in West Sandwich.
Waterman penned his eyewitness account on both sides of a lined sheet of paper. From the opening paragraph, it’s plain the description is meant for the Centennial Box, but he didn’t consider whether his late 20th century audience would need any help with the geography, let alone the punctuation. He sounds like a breathless kid telling a tale. You want to tell him to slow down, but Waterman is in the moment.
“. . . I was standing on Jarves Street heading from the center of the Town to the glass factories watching the approaching cloud extending from far beyond what we call monument point away to the northeast as it formed a junction with a heavy cloud coming up the valley of Manomet river over the village of Scusset.
“The moment they joined a flash of lightning from the north playing the whole length of the cloud met one from the south and the bolt descended like a stream of liquid fire . . .
“The barn that was burned was hidden from my view by some rising ground that intervened but in less than two minutes a column of smoke arose from it almost as if it passed up through the vacuum in the atmosphere that seemed to have been prepared for it by the heated mass as it passed from the cloud.”
In his Sandwich history book, Lovell wrote that “two aged granddaughters of Nathan Nye” insisted all their lives that the barn was hit by a meteor, but Waterman doesn’t mention that as a possibility.
“There seemed no space of time elapsed from its first flash to its close,” Waterman wrote of the strike, “it was all engraven upon my memory as the work of a moment – yes, quicker than thought.”
Any concerns about the property damage? Inquiry into whether everyone was okay?
Not exactly.
“The view was the most splendid one I ever witnessed.”
Before putting his letter into the Centennial Box, Waterman enclosed it in an envelope addressed “To the Descendants of Nathan Nye Esq.”
“Having been an eyewitness I with pleasure furnish the circumstances as they transpired for those who may be interested in scenes of the past while those who witnessed them may have been long sleeping in the dust.”
The old man didn’t do so badly. His handwritten letter held the essence of the time capsule: a message to the as-yet unborn from those about to pass away.
This is the second 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 "Did Time Capsule Contain Hidden Messages?" (Part 3).
Robert 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.
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