Rare Declaration of Independence copy to be displayed at Museum Center for first time

A rare print of the Declaration of Independence has been in the Cincinnati History Museum’s collection for 140 years but will be being displayed in public for the first time at the Cincinnati Museum Center, The New York Times explains in its Arts section.

Known as the Holt Broadside, the document is a version of the Declaration of Independence printed by John Holt in White Plains, N.Y. on July 9, 1776 after New York’s provincial congress voted to authorize the declaration. Only three other copies are known to exist.

“The Cincinnati copy originally belonged to Richard Fosdick, a native of New London, Conn., who moved in 1810 to Cincinnati, where he founded the city’s first pork-packing business,” Times writer William Grimes says. “It is not known how he came by the document or how it made its way to the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, a predecessor of the Cincinnati History Museum. It languished, cataloged but ignored, until 2010.”

The Cincinnati Museum Center issued a press release today about the Holt Broadside, announcing it would be displayed for the first time as part of its exhibition Treasures of Our Military Past, opening May 15. The communication sheds light on where the Holt Broadside has been all this time, perhaps taking exception to the Times‘ characterization of it “languishing” and being “ignored.”

“How the Holt broadside ended up in the Cincinnati History Library and Archives at Cincinnati Museum Center is fairly well documented,” the Museum Center says. “On the back of the document is the signature of Richard Fosdick, a native of New London, Connecticut, who brought the document, along with his family, across the mountains and down the Ohio River to settle in Cincinnati in 1810. … Following his death in 1837, his estate, including the broadside, was divided among his living children. One of his children or grandchildren likely donated the Holt broadside to the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, the predecessor of the Cincinnati History Library and Archives. … A handwritten ‘18801’ in red ink indicates that the document has been in the Society’s holdings since the 1870s.”

Check out the document for yourself starting on May 15.

Read the full New York Times story here.