Sealed for decades, State House safe yields secrets

[jakeXT]

Inside an ancient vault in the heart of the State House, past two massive steel doors with timed locks, sits an ornately decorated safe, the size of a small car.

Until recently, no one there knew the combinations to its locks or what, exactly, was hidden inside.

...

When the safecrackers gave MacDonald the signal that the locks had been opened, he lifted the metal bar across each of its doors and pulled the safe open, revealing two green filing cabinets and big piles of papers, boxes, ledgers, and envelopes stacked on shelves.

A dusty assortment of artifacts, at least one dating to the 1700s, greeted him.

..

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/massachusetts/2013/08/26/unlocking-mystery-inside-ancient-state-house-vault/nSJjYjznEbLMCjqhBF9H3K/story.html

[geckosfeet]

1. Wow - very cool.

The items included Confederate money from 1864; a weathered ledgerbook, dated 1896-1899, outlining pay for "Massachusetts volunteer militia service in Spanish-American War"; World War I savings bonds; boxes of old checkbooks; and metal stamps with the engraved signatures of former treasurers, including Foster Furcolo, who became the state’s 60th governor in 1957.

Also interred in the safe were a very old photograph of an elevated train, a 1936 stock certificate from the Boston Beer Co., and a role of magnetic tape from 1971, probably containing old computer files from the era long before thumb drives and cloud computing.

/.../

Mixed in with the papers was an assortment of items that looked as if they were out of a thrift store, what MacDonald called "costume jewelry." They included a bronze cross necklace and a Masonic ring, probably left in a long-ago abandoned safe-deposit box.

But perhaps the most intriguing item, provenance unknown, was a note inked in elaborate cursive script on a small piece of aged paper dated 1787: "Voucher for rations delivered at the Port of Williamston."

Sealed for decades, State House safe yields secrets

I love old dusty secrets....

[HeiressofBickworth]

2. Geraldo must be pissed.......