Reflecting on the ‘fight for freedom’: Declaration of Independence readings held

State Sen. Paul Mark and state Rep. Susannah Whipps joined in the Massachusetts Commission on the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution’s effort to place a commemorative copy of the Declaration of Independence in every city and town ahead of the 250th anniversary of the document’s first public reading on July 8, 1776.

The deliveries continued through Wednesday, with legislators across the state working to ensure every municipality could receive a copy. Several Franklin County communities, including Greenfield and Orange, took the opportunity to hold public readings.

“One of the commission’s goals is to ensure every Massachusetts community has the opportunity to participate in these commemorations,” Mark, the commission’s Senate co-chair, said in a statement. “I’m grateful to work alongside Rep. Whipps to help bring this initiative to communities across Franklin County.”

“I was happy to deliver these historic documents to clerks and historical societies throughout the 2nd Franklin District,” Whipps, I-Athol, said in a statement. “For my towns, I was accompanied by Revolutionary War reenactor Jeffrey Cooke of Royalston, whose participation helped bring this important chapter of our nation’s history to life. … These presentations are a meaningful way to honor the people and places that have preserved our local history for generations.”

Whipps presented the Orange Selectboard with the town’s parchment reproduction at its July 1 meeting, and also delivered a copy to Greenfield City Hall on Monday.

“It was printed using 18th-century techniques at the Museum of Printing in Haverhill,” Greenfield Mayor Ginny Desorgher said.

With reproductions of the Declaration of Independence, Desorgher said the state hoped municipalities would hold readings, similar to those held across the colonies in 1776 when the document was first signed.

“When the Declaration of Independence arrived in Massachusetts, our early, revolutionary government ordered it be reproduced,” Desorgher said. “Copies were read at churches and then delivered to town clerks.”

Orange held a celebration on Wednesday to commemorate the country’s 250th birthday. Before the Orange Community Band played an array of patriotic music, Julie Capone-Bouchard sang the national anthem, and Orange Community Band trumpeter Adam Whitten led attendees in a musical rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ann Reed, an Orange Historical Society member and a descendant of multiple Revolutionary War patriots, read the Declaration of Independence and delivered remarks about Orange’s connection with independence, gleaned from various records and reports.

“When word of the signing of the Declaration of Independence reached the settlement of Orange in the summer of 1776, ‘dancing in the streets’ ensued,” she read from a podium on the bandstand. “Printed copies of the freshly inked document were being distributed throughout the colonies via post riders. Dispatched from Philadelphia, news of the declaration’s signing had taken nearly two weeks to reach Boston and, so, a bit longer to reach Orange.

“Church bells pealed in the distance,” Reed added. “The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts had compelled local ministers throughout the land to read the text aloud from their pulpits, after which the copies were committed to municipal files.”

Reed explained that royal symbols were permanently yanked off of their fixtures and patriots hit the taverns to celebrate.

Christopher Woodcock, former longtime town moderator, then took the podium.

“As much as those Founding Fathers are respected and revered, we should never lose sight of an important fact regarding the American Revolution: it was regular, everyday people who stood up to fight for freedom and independence,” he read. “It was everyday people who risked their lives in the quest to break free from the tyranny of British rule and establish a new democratic republic.

“Before the armed conflict began,” he continued, “these folks had been living humble, ordinary lives … as farmers, laborers, tradesmen, even teenagers.”

Woodcock said Massachusetts served as the “epicenter of the rebellion,” and contributed more soldiers to the Continental Army than any other colony. The story of Revolutionary War service by local people is chronicled in a history of Orange that was written by Beatrice Miner, a longtime teacher, and published in 1976 by the Orange Historical Society.

According to that town history, Woodcock said, 27 men from the Orange area served in the military during the American Revolution. Fifteen of the local soldiers are buried in the North Orange Cemetery.

Before reading the preamble to the Declaration of Independence in Greenfield on Wednesday, Desorgher took to the podium in front of City Hall, recounting how “the colonists were fed up with British rules, taxes and overreach.”

“Out of that frustration came some of the most powerful words ever put on paper: that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator certain unalienable rights, that among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” she said.

The mayor said that reading the Declaration of Independence provides an opportunity to reflect on how far the nation has come in the 250 years since it first declared its independence, as well as how far it still has to go.

“We are here to celebrate those rights, and also must recognize they haven’t always been extended to everyone equally. So we have to hold two truths at the same time: it is true that America’s history involves injustice, and it is true that America’s history is a promise of freedom and equality,” Desorgher said. “Our history is full of brave people … working to make that promise real.

“A decade after the declaration, the [Founding] Fathers wrote the Constitution, and they started with the words ‘we the people, in order to form a more perfect union,'” Desorgher continued. “A more perfect union. Those words recognize that America is a work in progress. It is an unfinished project. It is up to us to keep working on it.”