Harvard researchers have discovered a parchment manuscript of the Declaration of Independence at a small archive office in the United Kingdom. Only the second parchment copy known to exist, it contains several features that mark it as distinct from the original.

In August 2015, Emily Sneff, a researcher with the Declaration Resources Project, was parsing through a database of every known example of the Declaration of Independence when an item appeared bearing the description: “Manuscript copy, on parchment, of the Declaration in Congress of the thirteen United States of America.” Sneff didn’t think much about it at the time, figuring it was probably a cataloguing error and that it was likely one of many copies made of the Declaration during the 19th Century. Nonetheless, she contacted the West Sussex Record office in the UK, where the manuscript was kept, just to make sure. When she received a disc with photos of the document, Sneff realized it was no ordinary copy, so she recruited her colleague Danielle Allen to take a closer look.

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Source: Second Handwritten Copy of the Declaration of Independence Discovered in England