Treasure in the Attic

In August of 1985 Dick Brewster, a local electrician, and his assistant Rod Compagna were hired by the Society to install a security system in the house. They were working in the attic laying wires while trying to protect the ceilings below when they made their discovery.

Dick Brewster explained that "…in order to do any drilling at all, we had to expose the upper side of the ceiling, and in order to do this we had to rip up flooring and take out everything between the roof rafters. And a very common practice back then was anything that you could jam in between the rafters was insulation. So we were finding everything from paper to cloth to old pieces of uniforms and whatever, in between the rafters."

Dick was on the second floor of the house when he was called to the attic by his assistant. He continues:

"So I went upstairs and said -- ‘What’s the problem?’ and he’s standing with a whole arm full of paper and I said -- ‘What’s the matter?’ and he said -- ‘There’s something in this pile of paper that I don’t understand.’ He said -- ‘it’s not the same kind of paper as everything else."

As they went through the newspapers they found a folded document which they began to open slowly. When theysaw "DECLA" printed on the page,Dick told Rod not to old it any further so that it wouldn’t be damaged. He called a member of the Society of the Cincinnati and immediately stopped work on the project. Dick and Rod refused to continue the work until someone looked at what they had discovered to determine whether it was the Declaration of Independence.

A Museum is Born

"As I recall, it was some two weeks or so before I finally got a call from anybody. And I was told that they had come down here and checked the thing out. It was in truth the Declaration of Independence," Dick said.

What Dick and Rod found was the New Hampshire Dunlap Broadside of the Declaration. The discovery of this very valuable document touched off a dispute between the New Hampshire Society of the Cincinnati and the state. The Society saw the value of the unique document and wanted to sell the Dunlap Broadside at auction to raise money to make repairs and to preserve the Ladd-Gilman House. The state felt that the broadside belonged to New Hampshire and should be available for the public to view and study.

The four year debate over ownership ended in 1990 with an agreement reached by the state and the Society. In the agreement the Society was to establish a museum to display and educate the public about the founding of the nation, and so in 1991 the American Independence Museum was born.

The museum’s mission is to be "a premier center for learning about the role that one state, one town and one family played in the founding of the new republic and the relevance of the ideals of the American Revolution in every state, every town and every family today." A reproduction of the New Hampshire Dunlap Broadside is on exhibit and the original is displayed each year at the museum’s American Independence Festival in July.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Wendy Bergeron is the curator at the American Independence Museum and also teaches United States History at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, New Hampshire.

VISIT AIM
The American Independence Museum is open from mid-May to October Wednesday- Saturday from 10-4. Both guided and self-guided tours are available. For more information please visit our Web site
CLICK HERE.