An early reproduction of the United States Declaration of Independence has been rediscovered in the collections of Cushing Memorial Library and Archives and will be on display starting September 10 to commemorate Constitution Week.

“We were stunned and then delighted to uncover this treasure long hidden on the shelves among our rare collections,” explained David Chapman, director of Cushing Library.  “This facsimile, printed in 1833, represents the first time an exact image of the original document was widely viewable to a large number of Americans,” he added.   This copy of the Declaration is much better preserved than the original, affording present day Americans a chance to glimpse it in a state approximating what  the founders would have seen, according to Chapman.

The document, a second-generation facsimile of the engrossed (that is, handwritten) Declaration, was housed in American Archives, a nine-volume collection of documents from revolutionary America.  In 1820, the federal government commissioned an engraver named William J. Stone to make a facsimile of the Declaration for wider circulation.  Though two hundred copies were printed on parchment, the method of transferring the ink to the engraving plate damaged the original document, making it nearly illegible today.  Ten years after this limited print run, Stone was commissioned to produce another edition of the document.  The facsimile in Cushing is part of this edition.

Recently treated for conservation, the rediscovered Declaration  is framed and on display in the Library’s Mayo-Thomas Room for the first time.  The exhibition will contribute to the Texas A&M University Libraries’ celebration of Constitution Week on September 17-23, 2009, with more displays to be held in Sterling C. Evans and other campus libraries. For more information go to http://library.tamu.edu/help/resource-format-guides/government-information/docs