An American original

Museum dedicated to Revolutionary ideals houses rare and treasured pieces of Colonial history

July 04, 2010|Christopher Klein, Globe Correspondent

EXETER, N.H. — Live free or die.

The state’s simple motto encapsulates its legendary independent streak. Freedom is so deeply venerated in the Granite State that, even though no big Revolutionary War battles were fought on its soil, it’s a natural location for a museum dedicated to the American ideals we celebrate this weekend.

The story of how this hamlet became home to the American Independence Museum could have been lifted from the screenplay of the movie “National Treasure.’’ It wasn’t Nicolas Cage, however, but electrician Dick Brewster and his assistant who made a startling discovery while installing a fire alarm system in Exeter’s venerable Ladd-Gilman House in 1985. Buried under the attic floorboards, amid newspapers and clothes used as Colonial insulation, was a treasured piece of Americana — a rare original Dunlap Broadside of the Declaration of Independence.

On the night of July 4, 1776, the broadsides were furiously printed in Philadelphia and dispatched throughout the Colonies — and to King George III in England — to spread the news of America’s separation from the motherland. One of the broadsides arrived in Exeter, which served as New Hampshire’s wartime capital, 12 days later.

Of the estimated 200 original Dunlap Broadsides, fewer than 30 have been found, which made the copy discovered in the attic worth millions. The Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Hampshire, a patriotic organization founded in 1783 and owner of the Ladd-Gilman House, sought to auction off the rare document, but the state objected, claiming the broadside was its property. The skirmish was settled by a 1991 agreement to create the American Independence Museum as a repository of the broadside and a center of learning about the principles espoused in the document.

The Ladd-Gilman House, which sits in the shadow of Phillips Exeter Academy, is the centerpiece of the museum. Built in 1721, the brick house covered with yellow clapboard was the domain of the Gilman family, prosperous merchants and one of New Hampshire’s earliest political dynasties.

“The family was very active in wanting to break from England,’’ says Julie Tiebout, the museum’s marketing and development director. Nicholas Gilman Sr. was state treasurer during the Revolution. Nicholas Gilman Jr. was part of George Washington’s Continental Army staff, a congressman, and a signer of the US Constitution, and another son John Taylor Gilman served as New Hampshire governor for 14 years. “They certainly weren’t slackers,’’ Tiebout says.