Sometimes, historical finds are so startling that they leave the history buff virtually speechless, capable of uttering nothing more coherent than “yikes!”
It’s always noteworthy when some guy rummaging through his attic finds a yellowed newspaper reporting the attack on Pearl Harbor, for example, or a letter written during the Civil War. But stumbling upon a priceless document that is more than 360 years old? That has to be in a class by itself.
That’s just what happened in Providence, Rhode Island, recently when city archivist Paul R. Campbell was poking around in a storage room at City Hall. As Campbell told the Providence Journal, he came across an open box that contained city records from the 1960s. But it also contained something else: a piece of lambskin covered in handwriting that looked like it dated from the 17th century.
This wasn't a reproduction of something from the 1600s. It was the real deal.
What Campbell had found was nothing less than the original charter of the Town of Providence, which the colonial legislature issued to Roger Williams in 1648, only 12 years after Williams founded what is now Rhode Island’s largest city and state capital. “This is the city’s birth certificate,” Campbell said of the charter, which had been presumed lost but turned up in a folder labeled “to be indexed.” Yikes!
It’s always noteworthy when some guy rummaging through his attic finds a yellowed newspaper reporting the attack on Pearl Harbor, for example, or a letter written during the Civil War. But stumbling upon a priceless document that is more than 360 years old? That has to be in a class by itself.
That’s just what happened in Providence, Rhode Island, recently when city archivist Paul R. Campbell was poking around in a storage room at City Hall. As Campbell told the Providence Journal, he came across an open box that contained city records from the 1960s. But it also contained something else: a piece of lambskin covered in handwriting that looked like it dated from the 17th century.
This wasn't a reproduction of something from the 1600s. It was the real deal.
What Campbell had found was nothing less than the original charter of the Town of Providence, which the colonial legislature issued to Roger Williams in 1648, only 12 years after Williams founded what is now Rhode Island’s largest city and state capital. “This is the city’s birth certificate,” Campbell said of the charter, which had been presumed lost but turned up in a folder labeled “to be indexed.” Yikes!
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