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Tuesday, 14 July 2026
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United Kingdom

Rare copy of US Declaration of Independence found in UK national archives by volunteer

Friday, 3 July 2026, 06:41 · 1 min read

A volunteer cataloguing 18th-century documents at the UK National Archives in Kew, London, has discovered one of only 11 known surviving copies of an early printing of the US Declaration of Independence — the only one known to exist outside the United States. Michael Scurr found the document folded inside a volume of Royal Navy correspondence, weeks before the declaration's 250th anniversary this weekend; it belongs to the so-called Exeter printing, produced in Exeter, New Hampshire, between 16 and 19 July 1776. The copy had lain unexamined for over two centuries after being seized from the American privateer ship Dalton, captured by a British warship off Spain in December 1776, making its discovery historically significant not only for its rarity but for the remarkably complete story of how it crossed the Atlantic.

Sources
The Guardian‘Vanishingly rare’ copy of US Declaration of Independence found by volunteer in UK archives ↗︎
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