Court: VA Man Owns 1776 Copy of Declaration of Independence

[tekisui]

Source: AP

RICHMOND, Va. – A rare 1776 copy of the Declaration of Independence belongs to a Virginia technology entrepreneur, not the state of Maine, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Friday. Richard Adams Jr. of Fairfax County purchased the document from a London book dealer in 2001 for $475,000. But the state of Maine claimed it belongs to the town of Wiscasset, where it was kept by the town clerk in 1776.

Virginia's high court said that a lower court did not err in its ruling in Adams' favor because Maine didn't prove the document was ever an official town record and that Adams had superior title to the print.

Adams' attorney, Robert K. Richardson, has argued that Wiscasset's town clerk copied the text of the Declaration of Independence into the town's record books on Nov. 10, 1776. It's that transcription, not the document upon which it was based, that is the official town record, Richardson said.

"The fact that the print was not made by an authorized public officer and was not intended to be the official memorial of the Declaration precluded the print from qualifying as a 'public record' under common law," the court said in its ruling.

Adams, who gained fame when he founded UUNet Technologies Inc., the first commercial Internet service provider, sued to establish title to the document after learning that Maine was trying to get it back. His attorney told the high court last month there's no evidence the document was ever an official record kept by the town of Wiscasset and that Adams is the rightful owner.

Maine Assistant Attorney General Thomas Knowlton argued that Wiscasset never gave up ownership of the document, which is one of about 250 copies printed in 1776 and distributed to towns throughout Massachusetts to be read to residents. Maine was part of Massachusetts at the time.

Maine state archivist David Cheever said he found it "incredible" that the state's rights were trumped by a private collector. Maine contended the document never should have been sold because of a state law which presumes that public documents remain public property unless ownership is expressly relinquished by the government.

more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090228/ap_on_re_us/declaration_lawsuit

[Historic NY]

1. Strange maybe, in my job I've been successful in reclaiming missing

official documents. Here Town documents got passed along from clerk to clerk many never being stored or accounted for properly. Many of our local documents ended up in adjoining communities or the old original county. Usually there is some marking or way to indicate it was part of the official records. I've gotten fairly good at recognizing individual clerks handwriting from transcribing local records from 1747-1949. This is not the first case of a circular copy being located. I am still on the hunt for some missing minute books.