Two Harvard researchers on Friday presented their discovery of a rare parchment manuscript of the Declaration of Independence discovered in a small town in southern England last year. US historians have found a rare parchment of the US Declaration of Independence hidden away in a small records office in Sussex, England.Researchers Emily Sneff and Danielle Allen announced their discovery at a Yale conference on Friday. The clue that led them to Wilson, Sneff said, was a stark anomaly on the parchment compared to its counterpart in Washington DC and later copies: “The names of the signers are all scrambled.”

Unlike previously known copies of the declaration, which have signatures grouped by states, the Sussex copy has its signatures in a patterned jumble. They published their initial research online.The newly discovered parchment of America's formative text is believed to date back to the 1780s, which they say sheds light on the tumultuous years the US experienced after the Revolutionary War.The parchment is believed to have belonged to the Duke of Richmond, known as the 'Radical Duke' due to his support for the American colonists against the monarchy and British parliament during the war.Working as part of Harvard's 'Declaration Resources Project', which is seeking to create a database containing every known iteration of the declaration, Sneff and Allen first stumbled upon a listing for the parchment in 2015, but thought little of it at the time. Sign up for more newsletters here

The signatories on the Sussex version of the document are not broken down by state, something that distinguished it from the Declaration in the National Archives, the researchers said. "Upon studying the document, the two concluded that it was likely produced in the 1780s, some years after the original 1776 declaration.The parchment was likely made in either New York or Philadelphia, though researchers are still trying to determine who wrote and paid for the document.They think it may have been commissioned by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, who later helped draft the Constitution and was among the original justices appointed to the Supreme Court.
A second parchment manuscript of the United States Declaration of Independence is discovered by Harvard University researchers, in a record office in Chichester, United Kingdom.