‘These documents tell our story’ | KSU’s restored Declaration of Independence copy now on display

Editor’s note: This article is part of We the People, a series marking the upcoming 250th birthday of the United States of America by Gray Media, parent company of WANF Atlanta News First.

KENNESAW, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - In September 2024, Kennesaw State University (KSU) unveiled its restored 1840s copy of the Declaration of Independence, marking the end of a monthslong process to preserve the document.

“This document was previously folded, and it was put in a book. That’s how most of these were disseminated,” said JoyEllen Williams, KSU’s special collections curator.

Williams oversees KSU’s more than 10,000 documents, books and artifacts collection.

“[Its] paper was incredibly brittle,” Williams said. “It was printed on a very thin paper.”

The copy of the Declaration of Independence was the lynchpin of KSU’s “Constitution Week,” where students could personally witness documents hundreds of years old.

“The students can really get a chance to live like the 18th century,” Williams said.

“If anybody thinks these documents are old, dusty pieces of parchment sitting in some archive somewhere, they could not be more wrong,” said Dr. Catherine Lewis, associate vice provost of museums, archives, rare books, and university libraries.

The historic items gave a glimpse of past life in a modern era when history is treated as a certainty.

“It was a grand experiment, and one we did not necessarily believe was going to succeed,” Lewis explained.

And the more that written past can stay alive, the better “We the People” are for it.

“These documents tell our story,” Lewis said.

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