By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Librarian
In the climax of the 1994 movie Richie Rich starring Macaulay Culkin, the villain unlocks the Rich family vault, tucked away inside of a mountain, ready to strike it rich himself with all the goods the millionaires have preciously hid away. But what he finds is nothing he expected – their most cherished mementos and family keepsakes. “This is junk! What is all this crap?” he cries, as he desperately filters through baby pictures, kites, an accordion and bowling trophies expecting to find gold bars and thousand dollar bills. (The bowling trophy he picks up happens to be a memento from Mr. and Mrs. Rich’s first date). “That’s not what we treasure,” Mr. Rich calmly answers when pressed where the items of monetary value are.
Many things individuals keep don’t make sense to any other people besides themselves. I have a box of “stuff,” although it’s just placed on a shelf within a dark closet of my home, but that doesn’t mean I have any less affection for what’s inside of it. I have various reasons for keeping this “stuff” that I never actually use. My parents or grandparents gave some of it to me, so it’s a tangible extension of themselves that I’ll have long after they are gone. Other pieces remind me of my childhood when the reality of the world was oblivious to me and I just played in sweet innocence.
Communities also collectively keep things. Many historical buildings contain time capsules within their cornerstones. It was common for a special ceremony to be held to place the cornerstone, which has been somewhat updated by modern ground-breaking ceremonies. According to an article on newstudioarchitcture.com, a cornerstone is “hollowed out stones filled with small vessels, animal deposits, and other symbolic items” and has been a tradition since ancient times. Typically, the cornerstone is literally the first piece of the structure placed exactly on the site where the building is to be erected. However, modern architects now sometimes design them above doorways, in interior walls, the floor, or the façade of a building.
In fact, ancient civilizations were a little more macabre – an article titled, “The Little-Known Purpose of the Cornerstone” claims that our ancestors ceremoniously placed a sacrifice, such as wine, grain, water, or even a blood offering, atop the cornerstone and dedicate it to their gods. Mythical beings aside, time capsules can provide great historical clues to how people lived and what was important to society at the time.
Before being placed in the Tiffin Columbian High School’s cornerstone, a photo was taken of the items it contains. This photo is featured in the Blue & Gold 1961 yearbook on SCDL.
Tiffin has many existing cornerstones that are decades old. The Old Presbyterian Church documented a "partial list" of items in its cornerstone including 1962 coins, postage stamps, a phone directory, nails from the former sanctuary, a TV guide and a map of Tiffin. Columbian High School took a photograph of some of the items in the current high school building’s cornerstone. This photo is featured in the 1961 yearbook (on page 31) and in this blog article.
Former Junior Home members buried a time capsule during the 2000 homecoming events with the stipulation that it is not to be disturbed until the year 2150 to celebrate the next millennium. It will be interesting to see if future generations are perplexed at the type of “stuff” that these Junior Home chose for their time capsule.
An article on historians.org explains that scholarly inquiry was important in Victorian times (when time capsules became popular in the U.S.), and that's why so many time capsules of that era, including many in Tiffin, contained mostly newspapers, pamphlets, and other documents. If you peruse the search results from the terms “cornerstone” or “time capsule” on the Seneca County Digital Library you will find numerous instances.
An image of a keepsake spoon with an image of carved into the handle. These spoons were made by Robbins Brothers & Co. in Fostoria featured different commemorative events and were sold both locally and nationally. http://bit.ly/SCDLSpoon
On the other side of the spectrum is the question of what happens to the items within a building when it is demolished. While the destruction of the iconic 1884 Seneca County Courthouse is the most infamous example in recent Seneca County history, many buildings preceded the local courthouse in meeting the same fate. Some life-long Seneca County residents may recall an auction of furniture, paintings and other valuable pieces once owned by the Daughters of America that belonged in their national home on the north end of town. When it was sold in the late 1980s, a very detailed story of the auction was included in The Junior Homekid December 1989. The author was able to capture the sentimentality the crowd shared. At one point, he writes, “two people were bidding on a wicker basket, made by the orphans at the Junior Home, which was paired with a ceramic cat. One of those people was the director of the Museum. She won the bid, kept the chair, and gave the cat to the person bidding against her.”
The Sisters of St. Francis kept items that provided a sense of what life was like for them and put them on display in one of the convent’s rooms. "Influenced by pride in ancestry... (in the museum) are objects related to the domestic work of the Sisters. The objects displayed refer to an important part of the Sisters' occupation for many years," describes the Sisters of St. Francis Historical Museum booklet. How often does one have an old kitchen utensil, tool or other once-useful object from a grandmother or grandfather?
Like buildings, events can often induce a sense of attachment for people wanting to cherish that particular moment or person forever, and we often purchase memorabilia for these sentimental reasons. One of the items in my box of “stuff” is a souvenir from my first airplane flight—a napkin with Southwest Airlines’ logo. A sorority at Tiffin University in 1951 hosted a Valentine’s Day dance at the Knights of Columbus and created a souvenir heart for each person with his or her name on it, as described in the student newspaper, TYSTENAC.
T-shirts have become a very popular type of memorabilia. A student in the 1986 Columbian Blue & Gold mentions that the first thing a group of friends did when they got to a concert was purchase t-shirts of the band. In 1967, 23 members of the Fort Ball Antique Club in 1967 made a commemorative quilt of scenes of Tiffin to celebrate the 1976 national bicentennial. Rather than getting pitched or sold at a garage sale, many individuals these days like to fashion their special t-shirts into a quilt to repurpose them. I, myself, have a “t-shirt quilt” of my favorite cross country and track meets from junior high and high school.
Martha Gibson writes in her memoir, “Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin” that she had kept a souvenir from a speech made by her late husband, General Gibson on July 4, 1854--a white satin flag with white fringe which states: "to W.H. Gibson, Orator of the Day, Tiffin's Favorite Son.” It was the cake topper at the event, and she kept it in the family bible for 42 years to preserve it. Every year on the anniversary of his death she would take it with her to his grave and read his speech.
Besides serving as mementos of times gone by, the “stuff” we keep can be unfinished projects and good luck charms. Eastern Europeans keep the scales from carp cooked on New Year’s Day to bring themselves good fortune throughout the year.
A homemade key fob bearing the Junior Home’s logo.
Prized possessions are so important to us as human beings that we often “bequeath” them. Many of the yearbooks in the SCDL collection dedicate a page or two to list the items which seniors place in underclassmen’s hands. In 1928, Columbian seniors bequeathed "full possession to the football team of all antique suits, colored socks, and unlimited privileges of mending." Again, how many of us have lucky charms we use before major events? Think of that lucky sock, race numbers which runners safety pin onto their shirts, for example.
A glass dish can represent memories of a grandmother always having it filled with candies. To this day, candy corn and the candy with the wrappers that looked like strawberries reminds me of my great grandmother. Her daughter, my maternal grandma, always has Werther's Original in a dish, which now my own children are enjoying when they visit their great-grandparents. Many have glassware collections and those around here probably have at least one piece of Tiffin Glass. Tiffin Glass continued to produce a "rose-pink" line to remind us of the Great Depression when many of our grandparents and great-grandparents were raised (Tiffin Glass produced a similar line during that era because it was cheaper).
Whatever it is we keep, we more often than not keep it for the feelings it invokes.
Works Cited:
24 Good Luck Charms Around the World. https://www.invaluable.com/blog/good-luck-charms/
Barnes, Myron. Between the Eighties Tiffin, Ohio 1880-1980 https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65253/rec/8
Junior Home Homecoming Event Booklet 2000. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/50063
Junior Home The Junior Homekid December 1989. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/47925/rec/8
Katherine, Amanda. Posted Sep. 26, 2017. 15 Creepiest Things Found in Time Capsules. https://www.therichest.com/shocking/15-creepiest-things-found-in-time-capsules/
The Little-Known Purpose of the Cornerstone. Posted July 24, 2019
https://www.billwarch.com/blog/the-little-known-purpose-of-the-cornerstone/
Martin, Elyse Martin. BURIED TREASURES: Researching the History of the Time Capsule. Nov. 25, 2019. https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2019/buried-treasures-researching-the-history-of-the-time-capsule
NewStudio Administrator. Architectural Cornerstones: The Meaning, History, and Intent.
https://www.newstudioarchitecture.com/newstudio-blog/architectural-cornerstones
The Old Presbyterian Church A Short History. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35757/rec/2
Reminiscences of Early Days of Tiffin. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12997/rec/2387
Seneca County Digital Library, Ohio Memory Project, https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27
Sisters of St. Francis Historical Museum. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39955/rec/12
Tiffin University. TYSTENAC March 1951. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/45778/rec/1
Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1928. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/1803/rec/1
Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1961. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/8648/rec/1
Yearbook Columbian Blue and Gold 1986. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/11934/rec/3105