Cleveland Catches Glimpse of 1896 in Time Capsule

“To Women Unborn: 1896 sends greeting to 1996.”

So begins a message locked in a time capsule nearly a hundred years ago and scheduled to be opened this weekend in a ceremony at Cleveland City Hall.

The contents were well documented in newspapers at the time it was sealed, “but we don’t know what shape they’ll be in,” a local historian said. “And there could be some surprises.”

In 1896, this city’s 100th birthday, 35 women formed a commission to record their own lives and times and send a message to the women of the city’s bicentennial year--1996.

“We of to-day reach forth our hands across the gulf of a hundred years to clasp your hands,” they said, then called upon their heirs to do good works and improve the world they will leave.

The “time casket,” as it was called, contains a small U.S. flag, a silk embroidered replica of a special newspaper edition, a city map, a multivolume history of the area’s pioneer women, letters and other artifacts.

The women’s message was read at a ceremony Dec. 18, 1896, by Catherine Avery, one of the organizers, and recorded in the Plain Dealer--the only one of the then-numerous daily newspapers in Cleveland still being published.

The message might have been written today.

“We bequeath to you a city . . . prosperous and beautiful, and yet far from our ideal,” it said.

“Many of the people are poor, and some are vainly seeking work at living wages. Often they who have employment are forced to filch hours for work from the hours that should be given to rest, recreation and study.”

It spoke of children robbed of their childhood, vice parading the streets and less-than-perfect government.

It cited the century’s accomplishments, including the telephone and photograph and the addition of kindergarten to Cleveland’s public schools.

Then it asked the 20th century: “Have you invented a flying machine or found the North Pole?”

The project’s organizers were hardly the stifled Victorians of current-day stereotype, said historian Dianne King of Cleveland’s Western Reserve Historical Society.

One was a school principal believed to be the first Cleveland woman to hold elected office, a position on school council. Another was a temperance crusader and ex-college professor. One launched a newspaper fashion section. Another compiled an account of women working in factories.

“My biggest surprise was that they were not the most prominent ladies of the time,” said King, who compared the commission’s membership roll against newspaper society pages and other lists of the day’s bluebloods.

“Some of their husbands were in law and business, but from the women’s addresses, they seem to have been a diverse group from a variety of neighborhoods,” said King, curator of an exhibit based on the casket’s contents to open Feb. 28.

King said she was moved by the group’s patriotism and sense of humor. One speaker at the 1896 ceremony, referring to Cleveland’s fast growth during her life, wondered if Buffalo, N.Y., might be a Cleveland suburb by 1996.

The women were serious about preserving their time casket. Made by a Cleveland watchmaker, it was aluminum, lined with asbestos and cost the then-large sum of $23.

As part of Cleveland’s yearlong bicentennial celebration, a new group is organizing a time capsule to be opened in 2096.