Building My Bridge to 2076: Episode 5
Documenting the creation of a family Century Safe, one decision at a time
About “Building My Bridge to 2076”
On December 31, 2026, I’ll seal a Century Safe containing letters, photos, stories and artifacts from my family to be opened fifty years later in 2076.
This series documents the entire nine-month journey from vision to gathering to curation to the closing ceremony. I’m following the Century Safe Method I developed while researching Annie Diehm, a Civil War widow who sealed a safe in 1879 that sat all but forgotten for decades, but was opened by President Gerald Ford in 1976, just as Annie had planned. This is Episode 5 of 23.
Thanks for joining me on this journey, and I look forward to sharing the stories of the Century Safes you’re building over the next months, as well!
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Release Date: May 14, 2026
Preserving for the future we may not see
When Annie’s Century Safe was opened in 1976, a lot of people were disappointed. A hundred years had passed, and the idea of what a time capsule was supposed to be had changed. People had expectations and those expectations weren’t met.
What Annie considered important in 1876, didn’t seem that important in 1976. Things like a directory of 80,000 government employees, autographs of members of the 44th Congress, and poorly identified photos of men history had all but forgotten.
As The Bicentennial Times wrote:
Hopefully the citizens of 1976 who are planning time capsules for 2076 will take a lesson from Mrs. Deihm and use a little more imagination in choosing items for preservation…”
In Annie’s defense, I don’t think she lacked imagination – she did, after all, invent the time capsule. Instead, I think she was a product of her time, a time when gradual improvements were the order of the day, when technology was measured incrementally, when tasks we think of today as quick and easy were anything but.
Take those lists she included. Lists like all the state delegates to the 1875 Republication Convention. Today, I can track that info down in a few seconds on my phone. In 1879, it might have taken me hours, if not days.
The local newspaper might have published a list at the time, but I’d have to go to their archives and page through old newspapers looking for it. One edition, one page, one headline at a time.
If my town had a real library, I might have found what I was looking for in a copy of a political almanac for that year, The Tribune Almanac and Political Register or maybe the American Almanac and Treasury of Facts. Otherwise it might mean a trip to my State Capitol or even the Library of Congress to get that information.
When Annie included that information in her Century Safe she wasn’t being unimaginative. She was being practical, solving what she saw as what might be a real challenge for Americans in 1976 because it was in 1876.
“One might also say that history is not about the past. If you think about it, no one ever lived in the past. Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, and their contemporaries didn’t walk about saying, ‘Isn’t this fascinating living in the past! Aren’t we picturesque in our funny clothes!’ They lived in the present. The difference is it was their present, not ours.” David McCullough
Getting the Ball Rolling
WhatsApp has been coming in handy for everything from suggestions on artifacts to put into the safe to timeline questions. Last week I sent out the first “official” announcement:
📢 Hey! Now that everyone has recovered from vacation, let’s start working on our Century Safe! But first: Thanks for your support for this project. I know you’re all busy and have responsibility, so my promises to you (again), are: I’ll 1) respect your time and energy, 2) make this easy and enjoyable, and 3) not feel bad, be disappointed or get upset if you pass on contributions or just do the bare minimum. I’m going to throw out a lot of different options so there should something for everyone to latch onto and want to contribute (see attached list). And as a reminder, the documents you contribute are between you and the future and won’t be read until 2076. You should have already gotten your supply box of gel pens, and acid-free paper, folders and sleeves, etc. that can be used for all the documents. Normal paper, pencils and ball point pens won’t make it to 2076. The archival box is so you have a place to put everything until I gather it up.
I’d originally penciled in “A Day in Your Life” as the first Big Ask of the project, but backed away from that for a couple reasons. First, my husband and I both came down with summer colds on our return to Wyoming. For three days I felt like the old people in the original Willie Wonka movie who hadn’t gotten out of bed for years. Second, I worried that a BIG Big Ask would be too much, too intimidating. Too big and too soon. So instead, the first Big Ask was more of a fluffy kitten-sized ask:
📢 I think our descendants will be interested in where we lived in 2026. Where we spent our time as families, our sleeping arrangements, how our physical environment was organized, what we saw from our favorite chair or out the kitchen window or when we walked out the front door. Rooms, houses, neighborhoods, communities. Feel free to include photos of any of your previous homes as. adults, as well. I will be handling previous our family homes.
This is a Photo Contribution. Old photos, new photos, video tour, sketches, drawings, floor plans - whatever floats your boat. Contributions can be sent via WhatsApp. Please identify each photo.
I’m gathering old photos and addresses for ancestral homes as they’re available, and will be adding those to my box of contributions. Ditto for the communities. Our family is sort of a typical midwestern family in many ways. Most of us didn’t stray too far from where the family roots were put down, which has resulted in some pretty neat photo collections.
One of my favorite centers around a little community park that was established in my hometown in the early 1930s. Here’s a photo of my mother there circa 1941. She and my grandparents were just visiting the town, but a quarter century later, my parents and I would move there. I’m creating a collage of photos depicting five generations of us in front of the same little “duck house”. It spans eight decades and is definitely going into our Century Safe along with an invitation to future us to continue the tradition.
A dirty little secret
Here’s the dirty little secret of family history: Every researcher has a favorite family line. I’ve been reminded of that in a big way these past weeks as I started pulling together family trees, information and stories to be put into the Safe. My favorite line is my grandpa’s paternal side, mostly because I’ve long been fascinated by his grandmother, Caroline. The midwife. I published a book about that line back in 2017, and I’ve already ordered an extra copy to put in the safe. Go me.
Or maybe not. Including an entire book complete with family stories and recipes, multi-generation photos, comprehensive timelines and migration maps for one line and a two-page summary and a couple wedding photos for all the other lines is a bad look.
Worse still, it passes forward a bias that, honestly, has no place in genealogy. Ouch.
So, instead - and this idea really had its birth in that passage from The Centennial Welcome I shared last episode about presenting the “progress of our people in a varied and attractive manner” - I’m making a family history tabloid. Perfect right? Room enough for every line to shine, and it will include whatever I have. A recipe from one line and a vacation postcard from another - great! Stories will be kept short so there will be more of them. I can include maps and infographics (once I learn how to make them), wedding and birth announcements, even sporting news, song lyrics and book lists, all in a “varied and attractive manner.” Plus, it’s a sweet nod to my former life as a newspaper journalist. The local print shop said they can print me out a copy for ten bucks whenever I get it ready. Now that’s a Go me!
✅ Progress report
With the real work starting for this project, I thought I’d make space for a short progress report. I now have a dedicated notebook for my pieces of the Century Safe which is already coming in handy.
Family Trees: I know it’s hard to believe, but I’ve never actually printed out and completed a standard family tree worksheet before - crazy, right? This past week I did just that. It really allowed me to articulate to myself, and to others, I hope, exactly WHO this project is for: the answer is my grandchildren. So, the trees start with them and go back five generations to their 3x great-grandparents born between 1856 and 1879. There’s sweet symmetry in that timeframe.
Newspapers & Historical Context: I’ve also begun gathering newspaper articles and headlines from the day each of us was born. What an interesting walk thru history, and one I highly recommend.
When looking at the day I was born in 1962, I was surprised at how many news stories revolved around communism - five of nine on the front page of one Minnesota newspaper I reviewed.
The other big news of the day had to do with America’s race to space. Under the headline, “X-15 Hits Razor’s Edge of Space, Nearly in Orbit,” 45-year-old test pilot Joe Walker noted, “…there is no question that we can put a winged vehicle in orbit and land it as I didn't.” He was right, but it would take nearly twenty years and the Space Shuttle Columbia to make it happen.
And the big news! My DIL’s parents have joined us! I think their initial response was like a lot of us: I’m not very interesting, what would I even include? But the more we talked over the WHY and WHO of the project, the longer their lists of interesting things got. Which is what happens, right? The idea of intentionally putting something aside for your grandchildren’s grandchildren to read and experience and know you by is humbling and thrilling in equal measure. It can also be hard to wrap your head around.
“History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.” Winston Churchill,
Finally, I’m settling into the reality that this Century Safe thing isn’t one of my normal projects. It likes the quiet. It begs me to just sit with it sometimes - not planning or jotting notes or making it bigger than it is, just sitting. That’s a strange feeling, a strange forward progress. I know the frantic work will come, but this stage feels like a long conversation with a new friend.
Copyright 2026 Lori Olson White
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It’s always fun to sit down with Barbara at Projectkin, and a while back I had the chance to share some of what I’ve learned about time capsules with her and the Projectkin community.
Recently I was invited to join Robin Stewart and the GenClub Panel to talk about Annie Deihm and her Century Safe. It was a fabulous conversation and a great format for in-depth discussions and questions.
The Story Catalog isn’t an archive in the usual sense. What you’ll find here is a living catalog of Lost & Found Stories – deeply researched historical narratives told in parts, discovered through newspapers, letters, court records, logs, and the stubborn human habit of leaving traces behind.
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I love catching up with this Lori its such an amazing project and one that your descendants will be forever grateful for.
I love that photo of your mother from 1941. Where is that park? It looks so familiar. Storybook theme?
Your family project for 2076 seems so doable. I recently read about a family in Manitoba that every 50 years they walk with oxen the same route their ancestors walked in the Red River Valley. Remind your relatives that your requests will not involve such an undertaking!