Portsmouth to display Declaration of Independence

PORTSMOUTH — The town's rare copy of the Declaration of Independence, rescued from behind a filing cabinet in 1987, still bears the original folds that allowed it to fit into a courier's pouch. The courier delivered the broadside — printed by Solomon Southwick, in Newport — for public posting in 1776.  

The hermetically sealed copy normally resides in the town's vault. But on Thursday, the public can view it from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Town Hall, on East Main Road, and hear a lecture on William Ellery, one of two Rhode Islanders who signed the original Declaration in Philadelphia. 

James Garman, Portsmouth town historian and head of the Portsmouth Historical Society, said, "We always do something around the Fourth." In keeping with that tradition, the historical society is sponsoring Ellery expert and historian John Parillo's lecture about Ellery's life and career.

The Portsmouth copy is one of eight known existing copies that Southwick printed on July 13, 1776, and out of two or three dozen he printed for distribution around Rhode Island. 

Two are in the possession of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, said Kim Nusco, assistant librarian for research and reference services. Another hangs in the Exeter Town Hall chambers, a staff member said Friday. The latter is believed to be a copy that garnered publicity when it nearly went to auction in 1999, but The Providence Journal was unable to confirm that.  

Portsmouth Town Clerk Joanne Mower said of the town's copy, "We've had it since the beginning"; it is the only one in Rhode Island known to have remained in the town it was sent to. 

Mower explained that when the original was signed in Philadelphia — then the center of the 13 colonies — "a printer named Dunlap subsequently put it into typeset, and prepared the Declaration so each colony could have a copy sent to them."

In turn, official state copies were printed and delivered to each of the cities and towns throughout the colonies. "They had a horseman pop these into their pouch, and deliver them from town to town," she said.

"Our Declaration has the Dunlap endorsement, the Southwick endorsement — and [when] you turn it over, it says, 'For Portsmouth Town Clerk, printed on July 13, 1776,' " she said.

Mower recounted the heralded rediscovery by then-Town Clerk Carol Zinno and retired Police Chief John T. Pierce.

"It had been folded up and been put in a picture frame. It was removed from the wall during painting and renovations, and it had fallen behind a filing cabinet. It lay there until they did a search and found it," she said. "Until it was authenticated it was just, 'Okay, it's just an old document.' I'm sure no one believed we had something as incredible as this in our custody."

The Journal recounted that discovery in a January 1987 article that cited Pierce's longtime 'gut feeling' "about the faded copy of the Declaration of Independence that had kicked around Town Hall for as long as he could remember." 

The Journal article states that the document, removed for painting in 1985, "lay in a cheap, black wood frame on the floor of Town Hall, propped against a microfilm copying machine," before it was rediscovered.

At Pierce's urging, Zinno consulted two experts, who examined the document and concurred that it was a 1776 copy printed just days after the Declaration was approved by the Continental Congress.

Meanwhile, another copy printed by Solomon Southwick, which has been held privately for 70 years, has been donated to the John M. Olin Library at Washington University, in St. Louis,  and will go on permanent display this fall, the university announced this week. 

kziner@providencejournal.com

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