J. L. Bell

Stories of the Signatures

Two hundred fifty years ago this month (and one month after they voted to declare independence), members of the Continental Congress put their signatures on a handwritten copy of their Declaration. That document then went into the files, and few Americans saw it for years. Today we can all picture the Declaration of Independence and its signatures, though the original has faded to illegibility. This talk explores selected stories about those signatures. Who at the Congress was among the first to sign yet his signature doesn’t appear today? Who helped draft the Declaration but never signed it? Which man was the last to sign, and how do we know? Which anecdotes about the signing are legends, and which did the Signers tell themselves? Plus, the handprint that mysteriously appeared on the document.