Whose Declaration is it? Maine vs. Va. collector

-- In December 2001, Richard L. Adams Jr., a Fairfax County Internet pioneer, paid a rare-book dealer in London $475,000 for a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Several years later, the state of Maine claimed it was a public record belonging to the town of Wiscasset, where it was read from a pulpit by the Rev. Thomas Moore and then delivered to the local clerk on Oct. 19, 1776.

On Tuesday, the 15-by-20-inch piece of paper will be the focus of arguments before the Supreme Court of Virginia. Maine contends that a Virginia judge erred last year in ruling that Adams, not Wiscasset, had a superior claim of ownership.

"You're looking at the document that changed the sovereignty of an entire community. It changed the way they lived, it changed their entire perspective on governance," said David R. Cheever, Maine's state archivist.

The Wiscasset copy surfaced in 1994 when an estate auctioneer found it in a box of papers taken from the attic of the late Anna Plumstead. She was a daughter of Solomon Holbrook, a jeweler and town clerk for Wiscasset from 1885 to his death in 1929.

The print was the centerpiece of the Plumstead auction in 1995 and was sold for $77,000 to a dealer in New York City. A London dealer bought it for $390,000 in December 2001 and then sold it to Adams for $475,000.

Adams, through his lawyer, Robert K. Richardson, declined to comment for this story. He is the founder of UUNet Technologies Inc., the first commercial Internet service provider. In 2002, Virginia Business magazine estimated his net worth at $750 million.

In a 2001 e-mail from Adams to the New York dealer, Adams wrote the price was "a bit optimistic . . . the days of Internet billionaires with more money than brains are long over."

Adams eventually purchased the print from the London dealer, Simon Finch. Adams filed suit in Fairfax County Circuit Court in 2005 to win confirmation of ownership after learning Maine was claiming it.

Fairfax County Circuit Judge R. Terrence Ney ruled in his favor in February 2008, finding that: "The evidence in this case is simply insufficient to prove that Maine ever owned . . . the print, or that the print was ever wrongfully removed from the state of Maine."

"Mr. Adams, as a bona fide purchaser and as the party in possession of the print, had demonstrated his claim of ownership," Ney wrote. Maine appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court on 10 grounds, and the justices agreed to hear the case.

The appeal from the Maine attorney general's office asserts the print is an official town record and that "a public entity in Maine does not lose its rights to its property by the passage of time or the neglect of its officials."

Among other things, Maine argues that town clerks in New England often operated their offices out of their homes and kept records there and that was how Holbrook came into possession of the document.

But Adams' lawyer, Richardson, wrote that the Fairfax County judge "found that there was no evidence to support any element of this theory."

He added, "Maine introduced no evidence that Sol Holbrook ever had possession of the print, nor how the print came to be in the attic of Ms. Plumstead's house. The evidence was that Sol Holbrook lived in a different house nearby."

Wiscasset, population 3,600, is a coastal community popular with tourists. It was originally part of Massachusetts and was first known as Pownalborough. The name was changed in 1802, and Maine became a separate state in 1820.

In 1776, the Executive Council of Massachusetts ordered that a copy of the Declaration of Independence, called a "broadside," be printed for each of the state's parishes and read to congregations.

About 200 to 300 were printed in Salem, Mass., by Ezekiel Russell and distributed to the state's then 187 towns. "Only at most fifteen are known to exist today . . . belying any contention that these broadsides typically were retained as public records," Richardson argues.

Richardson says the Massachusetts executive council ordered clerks to copy the declarations by hand into town record books and that it is those transcriptions -- not the prints themselves -- that serve as the "perpetual memorials." Wiscasset's was transcribed on Nov. 10, 1776.

The Fairfax judge agreed, ruling that: "The state of Maine introduced no evidence that any applicable statute in effect in 1776 required a state or town to retain broadsides generally or the Pownalborough Print specifically."

Cheever said he believes Maine found out about the print's existence in 2003 through an anonymous tip. Testimony showed it was tracked down by what began as -- but is no longer -- a criminal investigation that led to London and eventually involved the FBI.

If Maine gets the copy back, Cheever said it will be offered to Wiscasset, or the town may decide to leave it to the care of the state.

Richardson said in an e-mail that the print "is environmentally sealed and maintained under conditions to avoid damage."
Contact Frank Green at (804) 649-6340 or .