An Intern Saved a Museum by Finding This Revolutionary War Treasure in the Attic

The Smithhhsonian Magazie ^ | By Rebecca Rego Barry smithsonian.com December 1, 201512-6-15 | By Rebecca Rego Barry smithsonian.com December 1, 2015

[afraidfortherepublic]

The obvious lesson: never throw anything away

Once in a very long while, a rare book or manuscript discovery is so remarkable that it makes national headlines. In 1988, for instance, an anonymous Massachusetts collector recovered an 1827 first edition of Edgar Allan Poe's Tamerlane from a roadside barn. Many will also recall the 1989 story of the man who found an original broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence hidden inside a picture frame that he bought at a Pennsylvania flea market for $4 (and later sold at Sotheby's for $2.4 million). Or the discovery of the manuscript of Lincoln's last address found in a secret compartment of an antique table in 1984 (and later purchased by Malcolm Forbes for $231,000). Yet another "believe it or not" tale is that of the Nashville man who paid $2.50 at a thrift store in 2006 for what he thought was a worthless facsimile of the Declaration of Independence that turned out to be a rare, unrecorded copy of an 1820 print. He sold it for nearly $500,000.

The news of an important 18th-century manuscript found in a New York City house museum's attic in the summer of 2013 was another such story: a discovery in an unlikely place, a document of monumental historic value, and a small museum in strained circumstances that was about to gain lots of positive media attention—and a bundle of cash. It even had a celebrity auctioneer at the helm.

A heat wave tortured the city that July. Emilie Gruchow, then an archives intern at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, had recently begun working in the historic house's third-floor attic. When she recalled the day, she was clear that there wasn't any air-conditioning up there, and the room temperature was averaging about...

[afraidfortherepublic]

Thanks. She was a pistol, alright!

[Melian]

Great story.