Anybody Here Named Clarke?

On rare occasions, the past can be not only recalled but recaptured. Exactly 100 years ago next week, the elder daughter of Horace Greeley, 19th century journalistic war horse and founder-publisher of the New York Tribune, filled a ten-inch-square brass box with quaint mementos of her era and saw the box sealed within the cornerstone of the Tribune's new headquarters in Lower Manhattan. When that building was demolished in 1968, the time capsule was found and kept by the wrecker until late last year, when he brought it to a dealer to sell. The solid brass exterior had worn extremely well over a full century. Inside, its contents were a modest guide to some aspects of a vanished era: a department of public works report on the city sewer and water-supply systems, a rule book for the New York senate and assembly, speeches by Greeley, as well as photographs of him and his two daughters, copies of three rival newspapers of the day, even a Congressional Directory for the first session of the 43rd Congress.

Also in the capsule was a small plain envelope that bore, in a neat, modest hand, a simple message: "To the descendants of Stephen Tully and Charlotte Augusta Clarke. To be advertised in a New York paper when this box is opened." Stephen Clarke was the Tribune's financial editor from 1863 to 1869, the year he died, and inside the envelope are photographs of him, his wife Charlotte, son Henry, and daughters Charlotte and Mary Jane. The requested notice for the Clarke heirs to step forward and claim the family portraits was duly placed in the New York Times by a Manhattan autograph dealer last week. The remaining contents of the capsule are to be sold at public auction.

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