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Rare US independence declaration found in UK archive
LONDON, July 4, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – A rare parchment copy of the American
Declaration of Independence has been found at a British archive among the
papers of an aristocrat who supported the rebels, officials have said.
The manuscript was discovered at the West Sussex Record Office in the
southern English city of Chichester by a team of researchers led by two
Harvard University academics.
Tests supported the hypothesis that it was produced in the 1780s, West
Sussex County Council said earlier this week — just a few years after the
declaration itself was issued in 1776.
The document “is the only other contemporary manuscript copy of the
Declaration of Independence on parchment apart from the signed copy at the
National Archives in Washington DC,” known as the Matlack Declaration, a
council statement said earlier this week.
There are other printed parchment copies and handwritten copies on paper
but the Sussex Declaration, as it has been dubbed, and the Matlack
Declaration in Washington are the only two known ceremonial parchment copies
of the declaration.
Multi-spectral imaging of the document “revealed a date beneath an erasure
on the document” which reads either “July 4, 178″ or July 4, 179”,
researchers said.
The fourth digit for the year may have been permanently erased.
The Harvard Gazette said the clerk drawing up the document was
“inexperienced” as the date was written on a slight downward slant and the
year of the production of the document was used rather than the year in which
the declaration was enacted.
Adopted on July 4, 1776, the declaration states that 13 American colonies
then at war with Britain would regard themselves as independent sovereign
states no longer under British rule.
July 4 is celebrated as Independence Day in the United States.
– Sheepskin parchment –
Researchers said X-ray fluorescence analysis of the document found a high
iron content in holes in the corner of the parchment, indicating that nails
may have been used to hang it.
DNA tests also revealed the parchment was made of sheepskin.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1731 hrs