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By SUSAN M. COVER
Staff Writer 12/10/2007

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PRECIOUS COPY: Archivist Jeff Brown must use a key-locked elevator and pull with both hands to open a heavy vault door to reach one of Maine's copies of the Declaration of Independence made in 1776. The state is suing to recover a similar copy of Declaration, sent to what is now Wiscasset, which ended up with family there and was sold to a Virginia man at an estate auction.

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It will be up to a judge to decide if it belongs here or in the hands of a private collector.

The item in question is a 1776 copy of the Declaration of Independence that's traveled a long and winding path over the last 231 years. After the document was signed in Philadelphia, the Executive Council of Massachusetts ordered that copies be sent to ministers and clerks throughout what was then Massachusetts, said Maine State Archivist David Cheever.

That included an estimated 39 towns in what is now Maine.

The copy at issue comes from what was once known as Pownalborough, which is the modern-day Wiscasset.

Here's what the state believes happened, according to Bill Stokes and Tom Knowlton of the Office of the Attorney General:

The declaration has been traced to Wiscasset Town Clerk Sol Holbrook, who served in that capacity from 1886 until 1929.

"Our theory is he probably never even knew he had the document," Stokes said. "When he died, it did not get passed through to the next clerk."

Stokes said people such as Holbrook, a watchmaker, often kept town records at home because there was no town office.

When he died, some of the town records ended up in the attic of a duplex occupied by his daughters, Anna Plumstead and Mildred Holbrook.

They, too, probably never knew they had such an important document, Stokes said.

After Plumstead's death in 1994, the declaration was found and sold at an estate auction.

From there, it changed hands in what Stokes described as a series of private sales, and was bought by Richard L. Adams Jr. of Virginia.

Adams' attorney, Robert Richardson, said Adams purchased the document in 2001 from a London broker for $475,000.

Some time later, former State Archivist Jim Henderson tracked the document to Virginia, but didn't know the name of the owner.

Under Maine law, all public documents are public property unless the state or local government relinquishes ownership.

Stokes said they were trying to figure out what to do when Adams filed suit in an attempt to get clear title to the document.

"Maine was threatening criminal prosecution for violating Maine statutes," Richardson said.

"Rather than have that potential, the decision was made to clear the title."

But the state believes that the town never relinquished the document, and it's a public document that should be returned to the state.

"A document that belongs to the government continues to belong to the government unless it's been abandoned," Stokes said.

The state won a similar case in 1999 when North Yarmouth's copy of the declaration was up for sale. In that case, the state intervened when the document came up at an estate auction and eventually got it back.

That copy of the declaration was found among the possessions of Nellie Leighton, a town historian.

In the Wiscasset case, the state has spent $10,000 on legal fees so far, mostly because the state had to hire attorneys in Virginia to legally appear in a Virginia court.

"We do not want public documents up for sale to the highest bidder," Cheever said. "Some things are not for sale and this is one of them."

Susan Cover -- 623-1056

scover@centralmaine.com

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