A volunteer has discovered a rare 1776 printing of the US Declaration of Independence - one of just 11 known to survive and the only copy outside the United States – at The National Archives (TNA).
On 4 July 1776, shortly after the start of the American Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress of America adopted the Declaration of Independence, which famously declares: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
4 July is now America’s Independence Day, with the country celebrating its 250th anniversary last week.
Between 16 and 19 July 1776, printer Robert Luiste Fowle produced copies of the Declaration for his newspaper, the New Hampshire Gazette or Exeter Morning Chronicle. Just 11 of the ‘Exeter Declarations’ are known to survive.
The newly-discovered copy was on board an American privateer ship, the Dalton, which was captured by a British Navy ship, the HMS Raisonable, on 24 December 1776.
Saul Nassé, Chief Executive of The National Archives and Keeper of Public Records, said: “This is an extraordinary discovery. It's a vanishingly rare surviving copy of the Declaration of Independence, found not in America, but here in the UK.
“Preserved in our state records, it's a powerful reminder that the history of the American Revolution is fundamentally transatlantic.”
The document was discovered by TNA volunteer Michael Scurr as part of ‘America 250 – Royal Navy Admirals’ and Captains’ Letters’, a project to catalogue Royal Navy captains’ letters during the American Revolutionary War. It is part of the Prize Papers Project, a wider project to catalogue and digitise papers taken from ships captured by the Royal Navy and British privateers between 1652 and 1815.