Jenn Lang found 88 unopened cans of Prince Albert tobacco when she was fixing the crumbling plaster in her dining room. Credit: Courtesy Jenn Lang

Newspapers often get calls from people who discover interesting things inside the walls of their homes, probably because it's usually old newspapers that they're finding.

Jenn Lang uncovered something far more baffling when she went to fix the crumbling plaster in her dining room. She's been telling everybody about it.

People are mildly intrigued when she shows them an unopened can of Prince Albert tobacco that turned up in her wall. Then she hits them with the really crazy part. There were 87 more just like it, all topped with a tax stamp from 1918.

"I've found that's the most impressive way to tell the story," she laughed.

Now why would somebody seal up all those cans in the wall? Jenn has been trying to find out.

The house on Division St. in Stevens Point dates back to the early 1880s. Jenn, who is 27 and works in sales at Graphic Packaging International in Wausau, bought the home last year.

A week ago, she and her boyfriend, Shane Varga, were pulling old wallpaper off an outside wall of the dining room. The plaster was in rough shape, so they knew that had to go, too.

Behind the plaster and the wood lath, Shane noticed something red and metallic amid the gray, fluffy insulation. He reached in and got it. Then he started pulling out more. Jenn put them in stacks of five on a table.

When she was done, there were 18 piles of the metal tins. They also found the program from a local play from April 18, 1918, and a mail-in coupon for 12 free packs of cigarette papers.

"They were stacked from about the middle of the wall all the way down to the floor. I don't think there would have been a way for the owner to get at the cans unless they broke the plaster and removed the laths," Jenn told me.

You can buy cans like this at antique shops or on eBay. Prince Albert's stately image is on the front, above the words: "Crimp cut long burning pipe and cigarette tobacco." The tax stamp says: "Factory No. 256, 5th District, August 1918."

The tobacco inside looks and even smells normal, Jenn said, though she doubts anyone would want to light it up after 94 years. She isn't a smoker anyway.

R.J. Reynolds started selling Prince Albert tobacco in 1907. The brand was sold to a company called John Middleton in 1987. You can still buy Prince Albert tobacco, but it comes packaged in foil and cardboard now rather than metal.

I called the Portage County Public Library in Stevens Point to see whether they had old directories that might say who owned Jenn's house in 1918. As luck would have it, the reference librarian who answered the phone was Wendell Nelson. He wrote a book about old homes called "Houses That Grew." Jenn's house is among those featured.

He said he could only guess why someone would seal 88 full tobacco tins into the wall. Being metal, they would probably not make very good insulation. Perhaps a wife who didn't like her husband smoking hid them there. Or someone chose a strange way of hoarding.

I have one more theory. Someone was trying to quit smoking (long before the surgeon general said he should), so he put the tobacco in the wall knowing it would be difficult to retrieve. You know you're jonesing for a smoke when you kick a hole in the wall.

Wendell was kind enough to call the woman who lived in the house for 55 years before Jenn bought it. When she and her husband first got the house, they found lots of tobacco tins in the kitchen and dining room, he learned from her.

"She thinks it was old Dr. Cutting who left tobacco all around the house. Why, she doesn't know," Wendell said.

Around the house is one thing. Catacombed in the walls is something else entirely.

Jenn had told her boyfriend that she hoped to find something interesting in the walls of the old house.

"The dining room is the first room I started in, so maybe if they hid one thing in the walls, there will be more treasures in other rooms," she said.

Jenn plans to sell or get rid of many of the 88 tobacco containers.

"I will probably keep some of the tins," she said, "and I'll hear 'Do you have Prince Albert in a can?' jokes for the rest of my life."

Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@journalsentinel.com