The Secretary and the Scribe: “Penn-men” and the Declaration of Independence
The first printed Declaration of Independence, issued July 4, 1776, has only three names on it: John Hancock, the printer John Dunlap—and that of Charles Thomson, secretary to the Continental Congress, and one of two Penn figures intimately connected with its production.
From a poor Presbyterian family of Ulster Scots (“Scots Irish”) who emigrated to Pennsylvania, Thomson attended an academy in New London Academy, Chester County, led by Rev. Francis Alison before Alison became Vice Provost of the Philadelphia Academy and head of the First Presbyterian Church. Thomson was noticed by Franklin and worked as a tutor in the Academy’s Latin School, as assistant to Rector David Martin, after its opening in 1751. Thomson resigned in 1755 to teach down the street at the Quaker Latin Academy, perhaps because he resented the increased influence of Rev. William Smith, an Anglican. Thomson then served as a secretary to Lenape leader Teedyuscung during the Anglo-Native conferences of 1756 (see “Frontiers of Education”). Thomson is most famous for having been the secretary of the Continental Congress from its beginning in September 1774. He “attested” to, or witnessed, dozens of the Congress’s resolutions including of course the Declaration.[1]
A second figure behind the Declaration is Timothy Matlack, Thomson’s clerk. Matlack probably prepared the famous “engrossed” (handwritten on parchment) Declaration of Independence later in July 1776.[2] A lapsed Quaker, brewer, abolitionist, and proponent of the redistribution of property and wealth (but also of military service for Quakers), Matlack became one of the leaders of the radical faction in 1770s Philadelphia, and he was a major contributor to the new 1776 Pennsylvania government. He preferred to wear working class clothing and a liberty cap.[3] Matlack did not attend any formal school but he did send his to the College's Academy and was named as a Trustee of the newly reconstituted “University of the State of Pennsylvania” in 1779, serving until 1785.[4]