WELLS –– A researcher’s random inquiry to the Wells Town Clerk’s office has led to the discovery of a significant historical document that has been sitting quietly in the town’s archives for 250 years.
Wells Town Clerk Michele Stivaletta-Noble said her office recently discovered an original handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence, which her office has confirmed dates back to 1776.
“A couple of us were really excited that we had that,” she said Monday, while showing the document off.
The paper was yellowed with age, and the ink was a little faded, but the writing, in the hand of then-Town Clerk Nathaniel Wells, was still legible. Along with a word-for-word copy of the original document, Wells also took down the instructions given by the Massachusetts Provincial Council at the time.
Back then, the council had just voted to adopt the original document, written by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston and Roger Sherman. The council ordered several copies made, also by hand, and distributed to a selection of communities throughout the colonies, including Wells.
It was to be read aloud by the local minister during services, then handed over to the local town clerk for copying, which Nathaniel Wells did.
But from there, the local version of the document was stored in the town’s archives. It went largely forgotten until this year, when one of the original copies commissioned by the council was brought to Maine for a tour of the state, coinciding with the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Stivaletta-Noble said a man and his wife had seen the original, heard that some local towns had their own versions, and came to Wells asking about the local copy.
“He knew of the ones that were recorded into town records and he wanted to see it,” she said.
The copy is kept in a hardbound book, among others in a climate-controlled vault. Some other historical documents, Stivaletta-Noble said, date back to the town’s incorporation in 1653.
It’s not clear just how many communities throughout the original colonies actually made similar copies, and some may have been lost to time.
In Wells, the local copy has been scanned, and a digital version is now viewable on the town’s website, but Stivaletta-Noble said officials are considering how they might reproduce the document to place it on permanent physical display.
She said the original has to remain in storage.
“It’s safer in the vault,” she said.
Stivaletta-Noble said she’s excited to see a piece of history in the town’s own vault, and she hopes a permanent display will allow others to see it, too.
“It connects you with being back 250 years, of what was going on in the country and the passion that they had,” she said.