Notes from Underground
On time capsules and why we love them
It was raining the June day the class of 1878 carefully placed a copper box in the ground near Old Chapel. Planting a white pine sapling above it as their class tree, they commemorated their time on campus (years that saw the invention of the telephone, Custer’s defeat at Little Bighorn, and a devastating dam collapse on the Mill River) by adding to the campus itself. Over more than a century, that tree grew taller than the chapel, but when it died and was removed in 1990, excavators knew to search for this time capsule. Records left behind by the class said that they had placed beneath the tree “a box containing documents of great importance to future ages.”
Archaeologists and physical plant workers did find the time capsule—but it had leaked badly. The contents were saturated, and archivists went to work trying to conserve them, using a long process involving freezing, controlled thawing, and drying.
I came across this story in a 1991 issue of Massachusetts magazine—an earlier version of this magazine—and nearly knocked over my half-eaten lunch with excitement. I had to know: What was in the box? Were they able to save the documents?
University archivist Libby Coyner is keen to answer these questions for us. In the archives reading room, way up on the library’s 25th floor, I admire the dented, patinated copper bin, laden as it is with the stories of those who had put it in the ground and those who had pulled it out. Among other papers buried in the box is a poem, handwritten in beautiful, precise script. The unearthed pages, though preserved through archival heroics, are barely legible. Thankfully, a second, typeset copy of the poem was given to the archives by the same people who buried the handwritten one.
Yes, I want to read the words of the poem on that perfectly dry archived copy, but I also want to run my fingers over the washed-out ink on the warped, tattered one, to make a connection somehow with the fingers that penned it.
Coyner shakes her discerning head at the inefficiency of it all. “I do wish people would just give the stuff to the archives before burying it in the ground to get wet and moldy,” she sighs.
A craze for capsules
With Coyner as my guide, I begin a quest to trace the fascination that this time capsule’s discovery seemed to ignite on campus. The class of 1991 had planned their own capsule, as evidenced by records in the archives. But when it came time to bury it, perhaps because of their experience seeing the ruined contents of the previous capsule, they went the route that Coyner endorses. The capsule contents are in the archives, stored in special boxes that are sealed with bands and instructions not to open them until 2113. Staring at the pristine, acid-free boxes doesn’t offer the same frisson of wonder as that damaged, greenish copper box, but I have to admit it’s way more practical. Odds are, the contents will be in great shape.
Only eight years after the class of 1991 entrusted their keepsakes to the university archives, a Millennium Time Capsule committee took shape. With excitement and Y2K anxiety in the air, the community was invited to suggest what items should be included in a brand-new university time capsule, designed to be opened in 2100.
"We all want to leave something of ourselves behind for future generations."
Susan Krauss Whitbourne, cochair of the committee and now emeritus professor of psychology, remembers the project’s focus on conveying “the nature of this special place to future generations.” In selecting the objects to include, they were conscious of creating a story. “Everything in there,” Whitbourne says, “brings home the fact that as a campus, UMass is committed to being big, diverse, inclusive, and exciting. UMass definitely enjoyed its reputation for being a great school academically, but also for allowing people to have fun and express themselves in a variety of ways.” She notes, “We wanted to create an accurate picture but also one that was inspiring.”
But why do we gravitate toward creating time capsules? Whitbourne has thought a lot about this, since a focus of her research is how people create personal narratives and life stories. “People are attached to objects,” she says. “We all want to leave something of ourselves behind for future generations. And in the selection of an object, you’re manifesting that narrative in something physical.” In the case of a time capsule like this one, you’re creating a story that goes beyond the personal, but the way we engage with it is still very personal. “I think people are most interested in the objects that they could probably come up with some personal connection to,” Whitbourne muses. “We all like to insert ourselves into situations, and so maybe some of it is engaging your imagination with those people of the past.”
For the Millennium Time Capsule project, achieving decent preservation was a problem to solve.
In 1999, Richard Nathhorst ’79, a project manager who had recently shepherded the restoration of the Old Chapel clock tower, was tasked with figuring out the “capsule” part of the equation. The lessons of the 1878 capsule were instructive. “With the sodden time capsule in mind,” he remembers, “we put together a time capsule on the footing of the clock tower in Old Chapel and interred it in a brick and soapstone box on top of the huge granite footing.” No tree roots, no mud, no water, and hopefully a safe place to weather the next century. But was it still there?
Though barely 25 years have passed, knowledge of the time capsule has become scarce. One source I contacted thought it had been buried in the lawn, dug up when Old Chapel was renovated in 2017 and not reinterred. Another thought it might be in a different place in the building. Thankfully, Nathhorst is still here to set us straight.
“I’m getting to be a time capsule myself,” he jokes, having graduated in 1979 and worked at UMass continuously since then, nearly half a century now. Nathhorst agrees to check on the Millennium Time Capsule with me and see how it’s faring—and maybe share his knowledge of its location with a few more staff members, for posterity’s sake.
Nathhorst meets up with me, photographer John Solem, and Old Chapel manager Jim Neill ’86, wielding various sets of keys to try. Success! We walk into an electrical closet, duck through a shorter door to the foot of the clock tower, and scoot between the stone footing and a blinking lighted electrical panel—and there it is, high and dry (and dusty). Nathhorst is spry enough to climb up and dust off the plaque atop the masonry box, which reads, in part: “Through ... our mission of learning, discovery, and engagement with society, we hope to create a better world.”
It’s real! And it looks like the contents are well protected to persist another 75 years.
Old Chapel has always had a central place in the geography and mythology of campus; for many, it represents the heart of the university. It’s a natural hiding spot for this time capsule. Nathhorst reminds me that the cornerstone of Old Chapel (laid in 1884) is also said to contain a time capsule, including a copy of the original charter of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, among other papers and photographs. When it was first built, Old Chapel held the natural history collections and the library. No wonder it took root as the heart of the university.
Back outside after our dusty capsule visit, Nathhorst shows me where some graduating classes of the past had chiseled their class year into the stones of the building itself, linking their memories to this central building. It’s a time capsule, I think—the whole thing. As we stroll back toward his office in the Morrill Science Center, I ask, what would he put in a time capsule?
He thinks for a minute, head down, hands in his pockets. Looking up, he says, “Do you have some time? I’d like to show you something.” I do.
“The university and its libraries and its collections—it’s a huge time capsule. It’s a living time capsule.”
We flow across North Pleasant Street with the stream of students changing classes and head for one of Morrill’s many entrances. With Nathhorst as my guide, I’m not worried about losing my way in the legendarily labyrinthine passages. He stops and holds open the door for a parade of students. Some of them thank him—he nods and says, “You’re very welcome,” the pens and pencils in his shirt pocket poking out from under his coat as he nods his head just a bit in their direction, a gesture I recognize as the tipping of a hat. Turning his gaze out over the busy sea of students, he says to me, “This is what it’s all about, you know. There they are, our future.” I recognize the sincerity in his deep, narrator-like tone—a true believer.
“Think about Clark and Goodell,” he reminds me. Yes, William Smith Clark, the president of “Mass Aggie” who saw its first faculty hired and first students admitted, and Henry Goodell, his successor, who admitted the first women and African American students. “Those guys went through the Civil War, and they came back, and their goal was to educate—they were talking about educating the working class and women way back, 1820s, which was pretty radical.” He tilts his head conspiratorially. “UMass has always been radical.” I hadn’t heard that word used as a compliment in a while. It rang in my mind like the Old Chapel bell.
“Maybe I can introduce you to Kate,” Nathhorst says, explaining that Kate Doyle ’90, ’97MS curates and cares for the Natural History Collections at UMass. Moments later, we enter a doorway and admire the massive skull of a sperm whale, along with a huge array of animal specimens still bearing their feathers and fur. And, as promised, Kate Doyle.
“We have over half a million specimens,” Doyle confirms. Natthorst notes that some of the birds in the collection are “part of that original state natural history cabinet, so they’re almost 200 years old.”
“We have passenger pigeons,” Doyle says. “Keeping these things in a research collection preserves information [like DNA] that will be more available in the future as more technologies are developed.”
I’m starting to get the picture. “In a lot of ways,” Nathhorst is saying, “the university and its libraries and its collections—it’s a huge time capsule. It’s a living time capsule.”
From the 1878 time capsule
I think about Nathhorst holding the door open for students, and the long line of people before him and alongside him, holding open so many doors. Being part of the university means we’re doing that work and carrying it forward for this generation, just as others did for us.
When the UMass students and community of the future open that time capsule in 2100, what will the university be like? What will be unimaginably different, and what would old-timers still recognize? I’ll venture to hope there will still be people deeply committed to discovery, innovation, knowledge—and to holding the doors open.
