Published: February 10, 2009 02:32 pm            

Georgia's Declaration of Independence to be exhibited

Submitted by the Secretary of State's office

ATLANTA —�Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel said that Georgia's recorded copy of the Declaration of Independence will be available for viewing at the State Capitol on Thursday in honor of Georgia Day. The document will be on display in the Capitol Rotunda from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Royal Charter that made Georgia a colony in 1733 will also be on display.

"Georgia Day is a celebration of our state's history," Handel said. "We are proud to showcase our history by exhibiting the document that formed our colony and the document that made us a part of this great country."

The Georgia Archives has limited public viewing of its copy of the Declaration in order to mitigate the fading, deterioration and other damage caused by frequent exhibits.

On Jan. 18, 1777, the Continental Congress met in Baltimore, Md., and ordered that copies of the Declaration of Independence be printed and sent to each of the 13 states. The states were directed to make the Declaration a part of their official records. Georgia's copy was officially entered into the records on March 2, 1777.

"Some states entered the Declaration into their official records by pasting the printed copy in their record books. Other states, including Georgia, created an official record by hand-copying the Declaration into the state's record book," said director of the Georgia Archives, David Carmicheal.

In 1945, the volume containing Georgia's official copy of the Declaration of Independence was broken in to two volumes and rebound in a mislabeled book. In an age before computer indexing, knowledge about the records in the archives depended to a great extent on the memories of staff. Over the years, fewer and fewer people remembered the existence of the Declaration, and eventually it was "lost."

In January 2007, an archives staff member was conducting research for a patron who was seeking a Revolutionary War ancestor. He retrieved the little-used volume and, as he scanned the index, saw the words, "Independence, Declaration of." Subsequent research by the Archives established that this was, in fact, the copy recorded in 1777.

The Declaration is protected with Georgia's other "birth documents": the Royal Charter that created the colony in 1733 and Georgia's Ratification of the U.S. Constitution, the 1788 document that made Georgia a state. All are kept in a high security vault where a constant temperature and humidity are maintained to ensure their long-term survival.

        

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