1795 time capsule opened, centuries after Revere and Adams buried it

By Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN
Updated 12:23 AM ET, Wed January 7, 2015

(CNN)—More than 200 years after Samuel Adams and Paul Revere first buried it in Boston, it took an hour to remove all the objects crammed inside a tiny time capsule.

Onlookers anxiously watched the unveiling Tuesday, worrying the items might not have weathered the years very well.

"Could we actually go through the whole box, or would things prove too fragile to take out?" said Malcolm Rogers, director of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. "It was like brain surgery, with history looking down on us."

Piece by piece, Pam Hatchfield, head of objects conservation for the museum, removed each item, whispering "wow" as she first caught a glimpse of some of them.

Among the stash Hatchfield removed from the 1795 time capsule: Five folded newspapers, a Massachusetts commonwealth seal, a title page from Massachusetts colony records and at least 24 coins.

And at the bottom, an inscribed rectangular silver plate, "probably made by Paul Revere and engraved by him," Rogers said.

"That was the treasure at the end," he said.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/06/us/feat-pa...n-time-capsule/