Contents of the jar deposited in the cornerstone included……A directory of the Masonic bodies of Wheeling and directory of the Scottish Rite Body in the Valley of Wheeling, presented by Joseph Hall of Wheeling. Current copies of the Wetzel Democrat, Wetzel Republican, and New Martinsville News, also a first copy of The Evening Dispatch and a copy announcing the shooting of Pres. McKinley……

A neat discovery was made in New Martinsville Tuesday morning. (Editor’s Note: New Martinsville is on the Ohio River, about 90 miles south/southeast of Pittsburgh.)

While Jim Klug Excavating was tearing down the church at the corner of Maple Avenue and Virginia Street, the cornerstone was taken to be checked for a suspected time capsule. Because of its weight, the city’s street crew initially thought it was solid, but further inspected the stone’s underside and took off a stone cover to reveal a time capsule.

It was placed in the cornerstone of the Presbyterian Church on Nov. 8, 1901. The contents were contained in a glass jar that was broken. But the crew didn’t have to do any digging to find out what was inside. The time capsule creators had the forethought to include a typed letter of the capsule’s contents and who provided them in the jar’s lid.

Mostly the jar contained various coins and paper items such as a list of members, officers, and donors at the New Martinsville Presbyterian Church, the stone cutter’s journal, information on the church’s builders, newspapers of the day, and a copy of The Evening Dispatch announcing the shooting of President William McKinley. Obviously McKinley’s shooting on Sept. 6, 1901, and death on Sept. 14, 1901, less than two months before the capsule was sealed, were important to the people of New Martinsville, and the nation, at the time. One of the more interesting, or at least quirky, items in the capsule is a one-cent piece run over by President McKinley’s funeral train donated by J. F. Fair Jr.

The cornerstone and it contents, the capsule, were given to the New Martinsville Presbyterian Church, its originator. Most recently the church housed the Nazarene Church.

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