{"id":156152,"date":"2026-04-03T08:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/156152\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T08:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T08:29:10","slug":"easton-sends-forth-time-capsule-the-lafayette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/156152\/","title":{"rendered":"Easton sends forth time capsule \u2013 The Lafayette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a> <\/p>\n

Photo by Julia Flagg<\/a> for The Lafayette <\/p>\n

The time capsule will be held in the top floor of the Sigal Museum until its opening.<\/p>\n

Easton\u2019s community and foremost historians sent a message through time this week \u2014 to Eastonians over 100 years in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought that it would be a beautiful gift to give the future curators, and the future programmers and the future people of the museum,\u201d said Megan van Ravenswaay, executive director of the Sigal Museum, which hosted the event.<\/p>\n

The Northampton County Historical and Genealogical Society celebrated its 120-year anniversary on March 26 by leaving a love letter to Easton\u2019s future in the form of a time capsule, set to be opened in another 120 years. The Sigal Museum, operated by the society and located in downtown Easton, is dedicated to Easton and will keep the time capsule in its archive room until its opening.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been some people that have written letters to the future,\u201d said Monica Bugbee, the society\u2019s curator of collections. \u201cWe have a bunch of pennies because, of course, they\u2019re not producing pennies anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Carolyn and Anderson Dobb, who attended the event, had a large part in the creation of the Sigal Museum in 2010. (Photo by Julia Flagg)<\/p>\n

Many people also submitted newspapers, local publications and guidebooks for the Easton area \u2014 someone even put in a gas receipt.<\/p>\n

Carolyn Dobb, the wife of one of the founders of the Sigal Museum and an event attendee, put what we might consider an artifact now in the time capsule.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very old, I think maybe from the \u201830s,\u201d she said of a postcard. \u201cIt was in a flap, so when you opened it up, there were maybe five different scenes from Easton way back then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Bennett, another attendee, placed some artifacts that depicted important parts of his life in Easton. Bennett has been a volunteer tutor at nonprofit ProJeCt of Easton for the past 25 years and submitted a brochure from the organization alongside his personal items.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe put in the mass card of her mom, my wife, who passed away about 10 years ago already, and she was very involved in the community,\u201d said Bennet, who attended the event with his daughter.<\/p>\n

Event attendee Melissa, who did not give her last name, is of three generations in the Northampton area. She put in a family photo of a baptism that took place at one of the churches up the street, a church bulletin of a Palmerton Township newsletter and a printed family photo.<\/p>\n

\"\"Historic Easton postcards were added to the time capsule. (Photo by Julia Flagg)<\/p>\n

Tim Betts, the curator of exhibitions and programming for the museum, noted that items they wanted to see in the time capsule were everyday items that would showcase what life was like in 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was gonna write a letter to the future curator about what it means to do history today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s mind-boggling to try to imagine when they open that,\u201d Bennett said. \u201cWill this building still be here? What\u2019s downtown Easton going to look like in 120 years?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Julia Flagg for The Lafayette The time capsule will be held in the top floor of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-156152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}