Rare Copy of the Declaration of Independence Is Discovered in London
A volunteer cataloging naval letters came across a copy of the document, printed 250 years ago in New Hampshire. “It was a thrilling find,” he said.
Isabella Kwai reported from the National Archives in London, where she was among the first to view the new copy.
One evening in May, Michael Scurr was in the National Archives in London studying 18th-century letters from a British naval captain when he found a piece of paper tucked in a sheaf of papers.
“I unfolded it and there it said: Declaration of Independence,” said Mr. Schurr, a retiree who volunteers to catalog records at the archives.
It turned out that Mr. Schurr had uncovered a previously unknown copy of the famed document, printed in mid-July 1776 in Exeter, N.H.
Only about 10 of the copies — known as the Exeter broadsides, for the large sheets on which they were printed — had been thought to have survived over the years. The first copies of the declaration were made by John Dunlap, a printer in Philadelphia, to alert the people of what were then the American colonies that their representatives had decided to sever the colonies from British rule. Other copies, such as those printed in Exeter, followed as word spread of the declaration.