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The day that the McLean Historical Society chose to declare McNulta's hundred years officially up was a sunny Sunday in November. The ceremony, observed at Bloomington's Miller Park Pavilion, proved a great occasion. Civil War songs were played and sung. Uniforms were displayed. Mrs. Emma Hoffman, 96, was there. Her father George Ulmer served in McNulta's regiment, and she remembers going to reunions and hearing her father sing When Johnny Comes Marching Home when he worked alone in the fields. Mrs. Kathryn McNulta, 94, the general's daughter-in-law, flew in from Charleston, S.C. Her grandsons, Paul and Herbert Beich, arrived from Denver and joined their Bloomington brother Otto Beich II. "Everybody is wild with anxiety to know what it is all about," said Mrs. McNulta.
At last, the bottle was unsealed. Barbara Dunbar, director of the historical society, and Archivist Greg Koos used forceps to draw out the little mummies, wrapped in white linen and tied round and round with thread. General McNulta's sense of history turned out to be touchingly immediate. He had left, so elaborately wrapped and labeled:
Two pictures of himself and one of his wife Laura. The menu and program for a lavish dinner the Tennessee Army veterans held at the Palmer House and the entire seating plan. An 1868 reunion ribbon, some handwritten notes, two pieces of wartime paper money. One memento to his future heirs was sealed with red wax and carefully labeled: "Cigar given to John McNulta by General U.S. Grant, November 14, 1879, must not be opened for 100 years and then smoked by some one of the descendants or by some soldier who has rendered good service to his country." As a final souvenir, McNulta had tucked inside his bottle a set of newspaper clippings which breathlessly detailed the "Grant boom," complete with Grant buttons and cheap portraits, that struck Chicago during the popular former President's visit. The clippings described how the ladies wore their new diamonds and court trains to "brilliant" receptions, and imaginative pickpockets plagued the crowds that swarmed to town to see the electric illuminations. Evidently McNulta agreed with the newspaper that said: "As the hours passed on, it became more and more evident that this was really to be Chicago's greatest day."