Researchers from Harvard unearthed the second-known handwritten parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence. It was found in a tiny records office in southern England. Image Courtesy WEST SUSSEX RECORD OFFICE ADD MSS 8981

April 22 (UPI) -- A pair of U.S. archivists said they have uncovered only the second known parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence in a tiny records office in England.

The only other known handwritten parchment copy of the Declaration is the one on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.


Researchers Emily Sneff and Danielle Allen of Harvard University said they uncovered the document after noticing a note in a computer database created to track historic documents. Though skeptical of its authenticity, they traveled to the archive office of the town of Chichester in southern England. There, folded into a small square, was -- for historical archivists -- the find of a lifetime.

They said the document probably dates to the 1780s, though they are devising a method to test the parchment without damaging the actual document to confirm their suspicions. It's likely the parchment originally belonged to the Duke of Richmond, known in English history as the "radical duke" for the support he gave to the colonies during the Revolutionary War.

Sneff and Allen said their best guess of the origin is that it was commercially commissioned by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, one of just six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Wilson was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention who supported the creation of a strong national government, who regularly referenced the ethos of the Declaration of Independence in speeches and writings.

Another clue suggesting the copy's origin was a nationalist like Wilson is the order of signatures. Unlike the original version drafted on July 4, 1776 (though not signed until August), the signatures on the recently uncovered copy do not group the signatories by state. The implication, Sneff and Allen said, is that the individual responsible for creating the second known copy of the Declaration of Independence believed in a strong national government rather than a weak federal system that left most of the governing to the states. That, they said, would explain the lack of emphasis on the signatories' home states.

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