12/10/2007
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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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previous page | next page1-10 of 19 comments:
Actually, I think the State should distribute copies of the Declaration of Independence to every classroom so the document could be discussed in detail. As if they dared.
Citizens need to refresh their memory re: the contents of this remarkably revolutionary document. report abuse
You can add the "Patriot" Act and Susie Collins' S. 1959 legislation to your list.report abuse
You know the one that I'm talking about, the one that dealt with the penalty for anyone receiving or partaking in the grant of a Title of Nobility.
Although it conspicuously appears that the American lawyers guild has conspired with the Bar Association in London to keep that amendment under wraps, it still doesn't change the fact that it was properly adopted by Congress in 1819 and has been found in several Maine schoolbooks dated around that time as having been included into the main text of the Articles to the Bill of Rights.
See: http://www.amendment-13.org/
Oh well, I guess that the original 13th Amendment has been made irrelevant since the passing of the Bill of Attainder amendment commonly called the 14th Amendment was dubiously passed and adopted.
Now that all of those previous grievances mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and the Articles to the Bill of Rights are now being purviewed through the provisions of the 14th Amendment and America has been converted from the land of the free to the land of the enslaved.
The only reason that I could imagine that the State would want to acquire this copy of the Declaration is so as to complete the set that is in the achieves so as to increase the value of these assets held by the State, in order to better offset their bookkeeping entries in an attempt to increase its appearance of financial stability.
After all, the STATE OF MAINE is just another corporate entity that's registered with Dunn & Bradstreet and does business on the commodities trading investment markets of Wallstreet like other corporations do. It's a business venture, that's all.report abuse
Ten thousand dollars wouldn't go very far at all when it comes to buying oil.
report abuse
Read the article! This has nothing to do with the museum. It's the state archives' director, David Cheever who is after the document. Why don't you get your facts straight before screaming out your ignorance. report abuse
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