The Treaty of Paris

Last night I was watching the new Ken Burn series on the American Revolution when I recalled an experience I had in 2017, while visiting my family in Annapolis, Maryland.

In seventh grade I was a young girl who had just moved from Washington State to Omaha, Nebraska to live with my dad, his new wife and her three children, all younger than me.  Always an average student, we were tasked with memorizing the Declaration of Independence, and the entire U.S. Constitution. For our test, we were given blank paper and told write them in their entirety! 

Amazingly, this was not a daunting task but a happy challenge that I took on and I filled the pages with ease and glee.  I went on as a fervent student of American history, the American Revolution, the Civil war, and so on.  I don’t recall if I knew it at the time, but I was a daughter of the revolution (DAR) through many immigrant ancestors including John Adams, and countless others.  I think I learned that in high school, when a family genealogist provided me with a well-researched family history book titled, Roots – My Colonial Ancestors.  There, I found the names of Godwin, Harrison, Dixon, Moore, Bridger, Hughes, White, and others who had come to America from Scotland, England, and Ireland for religious freedoms and more, and settled initially throughout Maine and Virginia.

It was now 2017.  My beloved stepmother had undergone repeated surgeries to repair a hip-surgery gone bad.  She was on the edge of death for many months, and I traveled from California to Annapolis to help my brother care for her. 

One night, I strolled into the historic, cobblestone, downtown area, adjacent to the Maryland State House, and took a seat on an old wooden bench.  I closed my eyes and received a vision of myself as a man strolling along on a lovely afternoon, with scrolls of paper under my arms, a dog at my side, and thinking of my lovely wife at home, while anticipating what she was serving for dinner. 

But before returning home, I was to meet another man to discuss an important project, which required his approval.  I strolled towards the bench in my vision, and clearly saw a seated man next to me, Benjamin Franklin, my old friend and colleague who had gained immense esteem by the people in recent years, while I’d remained a humble printer.  He was in town to convene a meeting to ratify the Treaty of Paris, and I had been entrusted to print it, and all those signatures would forever ratify the agreement and the words I had so preciously and carefully scribed for the occasion.  (The Congress of the Confederation, operating as the legislative body of the newly established United States, ratified the Treaty of Paris on January 14, 1784, in Annapolis, Maryland, in the Old Senate Chamber of the Maryland State House (where I was seated when I had this distinct vision)).  Of note, my confirmed ancestor, John Adams was one of the signatories of the Treaty (see the final page here).

Ben took the scroll from my hands and took his time unrolling it and reviewing it for every detail and after a very long time he smiled at me and told me I had done a wonderful job with it and thanked me.  I was overjoyed, we shook hands and shared a very brief hug, and I returned home a few blocks to the comfort of my wife and a warm stew and my dog at my feet. 

But there’s more to the story.  In doing some research on John Dunlap, I learned that the person I saw myself as in this vision, had also printed the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution of which I'd been so adept and excited to memorize as a 7th grader!