An ultra-rare copy of the US declaration of independence uncovered by an Edinburgh auctioneer has sold across the Atlantic for a whopping £3.2 million.
The signer’s facsimile of the copy, gifted the last living US founding father Charles Carroll of Carrollton in 1820, had been missing for almost 200 years before experts from auction house Lyon & Turnbull made the find in a ‘Scottish ancestral home’ last year.
The document was quickly verified as the gift presented to Carroll - the last of the 56 people to originally inscribe their names on the parchment declaring independence from Britain - by then-president John Quincy Adams in 1820.
It went under the hammer in Philadelphia, just yards from where the proclamation was originally signed, on Thursday where one collector paid over $4.4m (£3,210,000) to secure it days before the United States celebrates independence day on July 4.
Carroll received two copies of the document, recreated to almost the exact size of the original, one of which is now in the Maryland Centre of History and Culture - where he had served as a senator until 1800.
The 1823 reproductions, produced on vellum, were engraved by William J. Stone and sold to the US Government shortly afterwards.
The remaining copy likely arrived in Scotland through familial links after being passed to Carroll’s daughter, Emily Caton, and her husband John McTavish - a Canadian diplomat and businessman who served as British Consul to the state.
McTavish also added his name to the parchment but gifted the other copy to the Maryland Historical Society.
However the other copy had been unaccounted for for 177 years before Lyon & Turnbull’s rare books, manuscripts & maps specialist, Cathy Marsden discovered it during an appraisal of books and papers at an unidentified home in Scotland.
She said: "I was looking through a pile of papers which had been brought down from the attic, amongst which was a folded up, vellum, document.
"Opening it up, I could see was a copy of the declaration of independence.
"When I got back to the office and started doing some research I became really excited as its significance became clearer. After extensive research we confirmed it was indeed one of the 201 copies made by William Stone, of which only 48 of them are known to still exist.
"Being able to identify to whom the copy belonged made it even more exciting and rare."
US partner Freeman's handled the sale in Philadelphia, where independence was declared at the Pennsylvania State House on July 4.
The actual signing of the document took several months, but primarily occurred on August 2 when 56 delegates from the 13 colonies travelled to the city to inscribe their names.
Freeman's president Paul Roberts said:"This was a great effort from both teams on both sides of the Atlantic a very proud moment for me personally – an international team working in perfect harmony to achieve a wonderful result on behalf of an extremely appreciative and supportive client.
"When Cathy Marsden first showed me this document on Christmas Eve I knew it was interesting but this outcome – achieving $4,420,000 (£3,210,000) on the eve of Independence Day weekend nearly 4000 miles away – is extraordinary."
