Please join together this July 18, at 10:00 am, when the Mattapoisett Museum, the Public Library and the Lions Club will host a reading of the Declaration of Independence as part of Harbor Days and the town’s 250th Celebration. It will take place at the Gazebo in Shipyard Park.
On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the text of the official Declaration of Independence and sent it to John Dunlap, a Philadelphia printer, who worked through the night printing copies to distribute. Word spread outward to the colonies at the speed of horsepower.
On July 18, 1776, Col. Thomas Crafts read the Declaration from the balcony of the State House in Boston for the first time in the Commonwealth. Many of the city’s citizens gathered in King Street to hear the proclamation. Abigail Adams, who was present in the crowd, described the scene in a letter to her husband: “Great attention was given to every word. As soon as Col. Crafts ended, the cry from the balcony was ‘God save our American States’ and then three cheers which rended the air.”
Readers are Rep. Mark Silvia, State Representative for the 10th Bristol District, Frances Feliz-Kearns, Select Board of Mattapoisett, Jenny Martin, Director of the Mattapoisett Free Public Library and Connor Gaudet, Curator, Mattapoisett Museum.
Together the citizens of the SouthCoast will “rend the air” with their own three cheers.