Volunteer finds rare copy of the American Declaration in London

A rare copy of the Declaration of Independence of the United States remained in the archives of the British government for almost 250 years, until a volunteer archivist did not locate her last May. This was made known by National Archives of the United Kingdom.

According to archivists, the document is one of just eleven known examples of an edition printed in Exeter, New Hampshire, between July 16 and 19, 1776, about two weeks after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4 of that year.

The rare copy shown to journalists

Ahead of the Declaration’s 250th anniversary on Saturday, the National Archives showed the document to journalists for the first time. The manuscript, carefully restored and preserved, still presents perfectly legible the famous passage which states that “all men are created equal” and have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

The capture of Dalton

The copy was part of a group of documents seized on 24 December 1776 by the sailors of the British warship Raisonable, who intercepted the American sailing ship off Cape Finisterre, in north-west Spain. Dalton. The latter was a privateer, a private vessel authorized by the American revolutionary government to carry out military operations against the United Kingdom.

According to Amanda Bevan, head of legal archives at the National Archives, the commander of the Raisonable, Thomas Fitzherbert, may have sent the document to the British Admiralty considering it to be strategically relevant information.

The Dalton had sailed in November 1776 from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and its commander, Eleazer Johnson, is believed to have purchased the copy of the Declaration there. The ship was the first American privateer captured in European waters during the Revolutionary War and the first to be taken to a British port rather than British-controlled New York.

“There was no reason to think that Fitzherbert knew whether the Admiralty already possessed a copy of the Declaration,” Bevan explained. “He probably sent the document because he thought it was important information.”

The US documents recovered together

Along with the Declaration were also recovered the rules of engagement of the US ships and the commission authorizing the Dalton to operate on behalf of the US government, personally signed by John Hancockone of the principal signers of the Declaration of Independence.

The discovery of Michael Scurr

After arriving in London, the document seems to have remained forgotten in the archives until last May, when Michael Scurr, voluntary engaged in a project to catalog documents from the revolutionary era, he found it almost by chance.

Scurr said he decided to look for other documents after reading a letter from Fitzherbert to the Admiralty in which he referred to some “annexes”. “I found this folded paper and there was the Declaration. I had never seen anything like it,” he said.

Archivists point out that although other copies of early editions of the Declaration of Independence exist, this one is particularly valuable because the capture of the Dalton was duly recorded in the High Court of Admiralty in London. This allows you to precisely reconstruct the path followed by the document.

According to experts, while much of Dalton’s documentation was transferred to the court, the Declaration of Independence exceptionally remained among Fitzherbert’s personal papers, probably because the commander considered it a document of particular historical and military importance.