1927-1973 | 602-606 S Main St 📍Findlay, Ohio
Tin Container at Harris Theater Cornerstone Box Yields 1905 Mementoes
August 7, 1974 | Page 9
By BEVERLY STAHL
Staff Writer
Actress Sarah Bernhardt was mobbed today on the streets of Quebec by angry, egg-throwing citizens…
In New York, delegates from 25 states met to discuss immigration problems and visited Ellis Island. In Washington, the House met to consider appropriating $16.5 million for continuation ot work on the Panama Canal…
These yesteryear items from mildewed Dec. 6. 1905 local newspapers and other fragile remnants from that era were discovered at high noon Tuesday shut in a tin box sealed in a crumbling wall of the Harris Theater.
Using a metal detector and proceeding on directions from area historian Don Smith, Wilson’s manager Wilbur Fenbert located the box in a northeast corner of the building—once known as the Majestic Theater—formerly occupied by Seebon’s Barber Shop.
Fenbert said a hole was knocked in the brick wall where the detector—said the box was and the box was chipped from the cement that encircled it. The contents were wet so he took them into the restaurant to dry out.
Smith was given the box and its contents to keep and will turn it over Friday to the Hancock Historical Museum, in accordance with the wishes of theater—owner Mrs. H.F. Wilson, of Lima.
Smith explained he knew about where the cornerstone box full of Findlay mementoes from the turn of the century was located from his research into local newspapers of that time.
The cornerstone, he said, was laid Jan. 20, 1906, and according to a report in The Morning Republican dated Jan. 22, It was done “without a fluorish of trumpets of any character, no parades, no music, no American flags leading a procession of prominent citizens.”
The account described the tin box being laid in a niche of the building “in the second column from the north side of the building and up about two feet”—just about where the box was found Tuesday, Smith said.
The 1906 news account states that after the box was placed in the wall and masons surrounded it with brick and mortar, tin box was “there to remain until the building may be destroyed, which may be tomorrow or which may be 500 years hence.”
The article continues on to describe what the tiny tin box contained—the same articles that were exposed to daylight Tuesday for the first time in 68 years.
The tin box fell apart when it came out of the wall and was pink with, corrosion thick with rust. It was a mere 8 by by 7½ inches, but contained copies of five local newspapers, an area history,
names of persons connected with the building of the Majestic Theater, local club booklets, citizens’ business cards
and other assorted Findlay tokens of the time.
A copy of the Hancock County Tribune, “A Republican Newspaper Devoted to the Interests of Hancock County, contained such grabbing headlines as “Naughty House Cat Takes Breath of a Ten Months Old Baby, Came Near Dying”
and carried ads for Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, which was billed as “to cure female troubles.”
Children’s fleeced hose as 15 cents a pair and men’s and children’s jersey mittens for a dime a pair were advertised in The Morning Republican, which then sold for three pennies a copy.
The Findlay Wochenblott, on Nov, 30 1905. advertised steamship cruises and travels in “vestibuled sleeping cars.”
This was a weekly paper published every Thursday and written
completely in German.
The Daily Courier copy in the cornerstone tin box advertised
“extraordinary attraction” —Professor Albert C. Waltz, from New York coming to the Imperial Roller Rink in Findlay for a demonstration of his champion roller skating.
Also in the tin box were a copy of the Evening Jeffersonian from 1906 and an Abridged History of Hancock County, dated Aug. 11, 1885.
The latter contained a synopsis of the growth of the county from the time it was inhabited by eight or 10 Wyandot Indian familes through 1886. At its end, a list of county tradesmen were listed, including tallors, saloon-keepers, harness makers, flour millers, carriage manufacturers, artists and members of “societies and bands.”
Also in the box pulled from amid the dust and rubble of the theater was a cracked and stained letter that began, “This building, the Majestic Theater, was built by the Majestic Building Co. “ and went on to list stockholders, incorporators and first board of directors members. It was dated Dec. 7, 1905 and signed by the board secretary, Dr. J.A. Kimmel who tested eyes and furnished glasses,” according to his business card in the box. A partially destroyed photo of the doctor was also inside.
A letterheaded piece of stationery of the C.F. Jackson Co., a local department store where Hancock County Savings and Loan Co. now is, was among the mementoes found Tuesday.
It was dated Jan. 20, 1906 and signed in penciled elegant script by E.E. Jackson, vice-president and general manager of the company.
Business cards from F.L Thorley (contract painting and graining), Kimmel, J.S. Patterson and Sons (dry goods, carpets, millinery and ladies’ wraps) and S.L. McKelvy (real estate and loans) were inside, damp, like all the other box contents, but for the must part intact.
The most curious item in the box was an Aemrican Bank Reporter book, dated December 1904, and listing cities in the U.S. at the time. Findlay was listed as having then a population of 23,000.
Fragments of envelopes from the Findlay Cadets and from I.J. Gordon, a general dry goods store at 518 S. Main St.,—were enclosed with a letterheaded paper from the F.P. Brewster Co.
Club booklets from The Symposium Annual, and the Carpe Diem Literary Society for 1904-05 were among the mementoes and listed members and year’s activities for the groups.
Smith, who has been visiting the Harris Theater razing site daily since it began earlier unis year, sald Fenbert surprised him Tuesday win the cornerstone find.
“It was quite a feat to be able to findin the box in that monstrosity,” Smith said.
He added be actually. expected to find the box more inside the theater than so close to the exterior walls.
KEVIN BENSON
CREATOR OWNER
GREETINGS! PLEASURE TO MEEDT YOU! I hope you enjoy the creation i’ve brought: this, the TEMPLE of TiCKLE-BRiTCHES dot Art. I DO still have my full-time gig NIghts at DHL CAMPBELL’s
