An interesting legal case has just been decided involving a copy of the Declaration of Independence made in 1776. A judge ruled that the copy, made by a public official and sent to public officials, is not a public record.
In the summer of 1776, the state of Massachusetts had copies of the Declaration printed by Ezekiel Russell, then working in Salem, and apparently a copy was sent to each town within the state. What is now the State of Maine was still a part of Massachusetts at that time, so a copy was sent to the town clerk of Wiscasset, Maine. The Wiscasset town clerk copied the Continental Congress’s words into Wiscasset’s official records.
The printed document was later found in the attic of Solomon Holbrook, Wiscasset’s town clerk from 1885 to 1929. His family put it on the market, and after passing through different hands, it ended up with a Virginia collector a few years ago. Officials in Maine heard about the sale and sued to get the paper back on the grounds that it remained an official public record.
The Virginia Supreme Court’s decision holds that the official Wiscasset record of the Declaration is the version that the clerk copied in 1776—or at least that Maine couldn’t prove the printed document was still a government document.
It makes for an interesting story. I bet the court verdict would have been different, had it been heard by the Maine Supreme Court since Maine has a very strong law about the ownership and misappropriation of public documents.
The private collector probably can now sell the document for several million dollars. In fact, it sold in 2001 for $475,000, and we can assume that the value has increased significantly since then.
You can read more in an Associated Press story by Michael Felberbaum at http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5inx9h3p2xLtbEgWdQX3CGw-5VFnAD96K3A8G5.
You can read the court decision at http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opnscvwp/1080987.pdf.
