‘Vanishingly rare’ copy of US Declaration of Independence found by volunteer in UK archives

The document was found in a volume of 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence that had not been previously recorded in detail. Photograph: The National Archives View image in fullscreen The document was found in a volume of 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence that had not been previously recorded in detail. Photograph: The National Archives ‘Vanishingly rare’ copy of US Declaration of Independence found by volunteer in UK archives One of 11 surviving copies of ‘Exeter printing’ and only one known outside US was taken from American privateer ship For Michael Scurr, a volunteer at the National Archives in Kew, west London, it was “just a boring old Thursday morning” when he sat down in late May to catalogue a collection of documents from the British national collection that had never previously been recorded in detail. As he opened a volume of 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence, however, Scurr unfolded a document whose opening words he recognised. “In Congress, July 4, 1776. A declaration by the representatives of the United States of America …” What Scurr had found was a “vanishingly rare” copy of an early printing of the US Declaration of Independence, just weeks before this weekend’s 250th anniversary of its signing. He turned to his supervisor, who was sitting opposite, and said: “I think you should come and have a look at this.” It was, he said, “a really thrilling moment”. The document is a copy of the so-called Exeter printing of the declaration, one of just 11 copies to survive and the only one known outside the US. What makes it particularly remarkable, according to Graham Moore, a records specialist at the National Archives, is the “amazingly complete story” of how it came to be in the possession of the Royal Navy, and what that says about how news of the declaration spread as the new nation sought to assert its autonomy. View image in fullscreen The paper was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, between 16 and 19 July 1776. Photograph: The National Archives The document was discovered among a collection of papers taken from an American privateer vessel called the Dalton, after it was captured by a British warship off the coast of Spain in December 1776. Though other significant papers were passed on to the Admiralty Court – including the privately owned ship’s commission, personally signed by the Continental Congress president, John Hancock, to attack British vessels on behalf of the fledgling US – the declaration was not. Instead, it would be recorded only as “another document” and forgotten for more than two centuries in the naval archives. The modest sheet of paper was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, between 16 and 19 July – the time taken for news to spread of the bold declaration first signed in Philadelphia on 4 July. These “broadsides”, like those rattled off by printers in other major cities, “were designed to be printed quickly, distributed fast, and read and consumed by as many people as possible in as short a time as poss