In the Family
Among the papers in Hannah Dunster’s closet was her father’s copy of the Declaration of Independence
Hannah Dunster was eight years old in 1776. Decades later, when she was in her eighties, she received an unexpected visit. Dunster had outlived her parents and siblings. She thought that she was the only living descendant of Henry Dunster, who immigrated to Massachusetts in 1640 and became the first president of Harvard College. But Hannah learned that she was wrong when she welcomed Edward Swift Dunster, an eighteen-year-old Harvard student, into her home in Pembroke, Massachusetts, one day in 1852.
From the perspective of Hannah’s young cousin, she was a cat lady—a woman who had never married and showered all of her affection on her three pet cats, who slept on her bed and ate better food than she did. But as the two Dunsters sat and talked, Edward began to appreciate Hannah as a font of family knowledge. Hannah gave Edward a few of her father’s books, some of which had been in their family for generations. She told him that, on the top shelf of her hall closet, she kept some more family papers. Among the papers in Hannah Dunster’s closet was her father’s copy of the Declaration of Independence.
Ezekiel Russell Broadside of the Declaration of Independence, 1776, 21150, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
In the summer of 1776, the Massachusetts Council ordered that the Declaration of Independence should be printed, “and a Copy sent to the Ministers of each Parish, of every Denomination, within this State.” These ministers were “required to read” the Declaration “to their respective Congregations” on the first Sunday after they received their broadside copy of the text, printed by Ezekiel Russell in Salem. Hannah Dunster’s father, the Reverend Isaiah Dunster, had been the minister of a church in Harwich, halfway around Cape Cod, since long before she was born. Like other Massachusetts ministers, Dunster received a broadside that had been folded up and addressed to him: “Revd. Mr. Dunster” and, below, “Harwich.”
Ezekiel Russell Broadside of the Declaration of Independence (Detail of Reverse), 1776, 21150, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
Isaiah Dunster was not the only member of his family who received one of these broadsides of the Declaration of Independence. His sister Mary’s son, John Marrett, was the minister of a church in Woburn, north of Boston. Marrett’s copy of the Declaration is not known to survive.
Isaiah Dunster read his broadside of the Declaration of Independence to his congregation sometime in August 1776. After doing so, he and the other ministers in Massachusetts were supposed to “deliver the said Declaration to the Clerks of their several Towns or Districts.” But Dunster held onto his broadside. It stayed in his family and, by 1852, it was on the top shelf in his daughter’s hall closet.
Years later, Samuel Dunster, another descendant of the Harvard president, wrote a history of the Dunster family in North America. He cited Isaiah Dunster’s broadside of the Declaration of Independence and recounted Edward Swift Dunster’s story of visiting his cat lady cousin. In 1884, Samuel Dunster added a note along the right margin of the broadside, in ink that bled through to the back and obscured the name and town that had been written more than a century earlier. Dunster explained the importance of this copy of the Declaration and implored future generations: “Please keep it in the family.”
Ezekiel Russell Broadside of the Declaration of Independence (Detail), 1776, 21150, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
Isaiah Dunster’s copy of the Declaration of Independence passed to his daughter, Hannah, and other members of the Dunster family until 1920, when it was sold at auction. Now, the broadside is carefully preserved in the collection of the Huntington Library in San Marino, California—-more than 3,000 miles from the town on Cape Cod where Isaiah Dunster read the Declaration to his congregation in the summer of 1776.
Where to See It Online: The Huntington Library, San Marino, California
