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On July 19, 1776, the Continental Congress ordered the Declaration of Independence to be engrossed—or written out in a large legible hand. Timothy Matlack, a clerk in the Pennsylvania State House, was the scribe charged with this task. Since then, the Declaration of Independence has had a fairly rough time. A forensic analysis of the document shows some rough handling, damaging displays, and even a mysterious handprint. When the Second Continental Congressadopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the manuscript was immediately rushed to the nearby shop of John Dunlap, who printed an estimated 200 The classic picture of the Declaration of Independence is a handwritten document made of calfskin. But printing presses existed in 1776 — Benjamin Franklin was even a printer in Philadelphia. On the earliest draft of the Declaration of Independence held by the Library of Congress, France was able to determine that Thomas Jefferson had changed the word “subjects” to “citizens” although this revision was unseen by the naked eye. The evidence of the alteration was apparent only through hyperspectral imaging. Only seven manuscript versions of the Declaration of Independence are known to survive in the hand of Thomas Jefferson, its principal author. Jefferson made this copy for a friend shortly after the July 4th, 1776, ratification of the Declaration, which announced to the world the American colonies’ political separation from Great Britain. The text recorded in this copy very nearly mirrors Did you know the oldest person to sign the Declaration of Independence was 70, there is a dirty handprint on the declaration, or that the word independence never appears in the document? Discover the extreme history of the Declaration of Independence. There is no map, but there is something on the back of the engrossed and signed parchment. A label at the bottom of the parchment reads, "Original Declaration of Independence dated 4th July 1776". The Declaration of Independence bears the rhetorical handprint of a generation of Americans who were determined to throw off the yoke of royal tyranny. It also bears a handprint, literally. Chris Moody investigates how a handprint got onto the lower left corner of the Declaration of Independence at some point in the last 240 years. Has the Declaration of Independence been defaced? Did someone rewrite and enhance signatures on the hallowed parchment? And is that — and the grimy handprint on the document — the result of The Declaration of Independence has spelling mishaps, word usage oddities, missing words, and even a handprint. Read more Declaration of Independence: A Transcription Note: The following text is a transcription of the Stone Engraving of the parchment Declaration of Independence (the document on display in the Rotunda at the National Archives Museum.) Fontana Micucci’s article at Boundary Stones focused my attention on something I’d seen for years without thinking about—there’s a handprint on the corner of the Declaration of Independence. ♦ Our “official” Declaration of Independence—the one we consider the full, signed original or the Matlack Declaration—is in rough shape. Consider this: The ink has faded by, what seems to me, an alarming amount, The handprint—first noticed in 1940 on the face of the document—of an, as yet, unknown person continues to emerge, The Declaration of Independence was signed by members of the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. Historians are baffled by a big, dirty handprint on the bottom lefthand corner. Declaration of Independence in its encasement in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom Declaration of Independence with John Hancock's signature Declaration of Independence showing handprint in lower left corner Declaration of Independence showing handprint in lower left corner Chris Moody investigates how a handprint got onto the lower left corner of the Declaration of Independence at some point in the last 238 years. Visit our July 4th webpage to learn more about the Declaration of Independence and our celebration of it at the National Archives. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? If you answered “Thomas Jefferson,” you are both right and wrong. To attempt to unlock the secret of this age-old historical mystery, CNN Politics followed the path of the document in Washington, an exploration that took us to the underground Conservation Lab at
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