BYU Professors Recreate the First Printed Declaration of Independence

Most Americans know the Declaration of Independence as a carefully preserved founding document, but the first people who read it did not see a signed parchment displayed behind glass. They saw a printed sheet of paper, rushed through a Philadelphia press overnight and sent out as the colonies declared themselves independent. That first official printing became known as the Dunlap Broadside, and nearly 250 years later, two BYU-connected educators are helping people see that printed sheet again.

KUTV reported that BYU emeritus professor Gove Allen is preparing a separate festival demonstration that echoes the original overnight printing. On July 4, he plans to use an 18th-century-style press to produce 200 copies of the Declaration, matching the scale and timing of the first print run.

Meanwhile, according to a BYU news story by Ashleigh Staples, BYU adjunct professor Robert Buchert recreated the look and materials of the Dunlap Broadside through handmade paper, custom type design and careful study of its original spacing, watermark and printing flaws.

Both projects return attention to a part of the Declaration’s story that often gets overlooked: the moment when its words became something people could hold, post, read and carry. Through handmade paper, recreated type, damaged letters and old printing tools, Buchert and Allen are showing how much history remains visible in the physical details of that first printed page.

The First Copies of Independence

The story of the Dunlap Broadside begins on July 4, 1776, just hours after the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. According to the BYU account, Thomas Jefferson carried the final text through the streets of Philadelphia to a nearby print shop, where printers worked through the night to produce about 200 copies before morning.

Those copies served a practical and urgent purpose. They gave the colonies an official printed announcement that Congress had declared independence, long before the Declaration became the familiar national symbol many people recognize today.

The word “broadside” refers to a large sheet printed on one side, often used in the 18th century for public announcements, proclamations and notices. In this case, the broadside carried the text of the Declaration into the world quickly, while the consequences of that declaration still hung in the balance.

The original printers did not have months to refine the layout, choose cleaner type or fix uneven spacing. They worked in the middle of a revolution, under pressure, with a deadline measured in hours rather than weeks.

A Phone Call That Opened a Larger Project

Buchert’s work began with a request that sounded much smaller than the project it eventually produced. Gove Allen, who helped organize the Colonial Heritage Festival in Orem, Utah, called Buchert while looking for authentic 18th-century paper for the festival’s George Washington reenactor.

As Buchert researched colonial papermaking, he came across the Dunlap Broadside and began studying the first printed Declaration more closely. The project soon grew beyond paper, giving him a chance to use his skills on one unusually exacting recreation.

“I make papermaking equipment. I make paper. I do type design. I do letterpress printing,” Buchert said. “That’s sort of a strange skill set to have. It is very niche. But it was like, ‘Oh, but that’s the skill set you need to do this thing.’”

Rebuilding More Than Words

Buchert did not approach the replica as a simple copy of the Declaration’s text. He approached it as a physical object, where the paper, watermark, typeface, spacing and even mistakes all carried information about the night printers first produced it.

According to the BYU story, Buchert studied a high-resolution scan of one of the 26 surviving original Dunlap Broadsides preserved by the Library of Congress. He scaled the scan to its original dimensions and began breaking down the document’s details one by one.

The paper alone required unusual precision. Buchert engineered a specialized screen to match the original’s 1.05-inch chain lines, digitally uncovered the watermark, shaped the wire design by hand and soldered it to the mold.

He then made sheets from flax, hemp and cotton fibers. Those details matter because the paper was not simply a blank surface; it was part of the broadside’s identity and one of the clues that tied the replica to 18th-century printing methods.

Recreating the Type, Line by Line

Modern fonts could reproduce the words, but Buchert decided they could not reproduce the document. He rebuilt the typeface from historical specimens and used type that evidence from a specimen book suggested came from the same foundry that supplied the original.

That choice gave the project a level of accuracy most readers would never notice at first glance. Yet the deeper Buchert looked, the more the physical appearance of the broadside revealed about the original printing.

The text curves slightly across the page, and the spacing shifts in ways that a modern designer might instinctively correct. Buchert saw those marks not as distractions but as evidence of the speed and urgency that shaped the first printing.

“It’s not just a document of their complaint,” he said. “It’s a document of that night, and the excitement and the rush they had to go into to do it.”

The Work Hidden in Imperfection

The most fascinating part of Buchert’s replica may be that he had to work hard to make it look imperfect in the right way. A clean, straight, evenly spaced Declaration would have looked more polished, but it would not have matched the original Dunlap Broadside.

According to the BYU account, Buchert manually adjusted every character to match the original spacing and alignment. What normally takes minutes stretched into days as he recreated each bend, gap and irregularity.

That process turned small visual flaws into historical evidence. The uneven lines and damaged-looking details helped preserve the story of printers moving quickly, with little room for correction, while producing the first official copies of a new nation’s declaration.

After four months of work, Buchert finally reached the press, but he still hesitated before making the first impression. “What if I screwed it up?” he recalled thinking, before the first successful print brought relief after months of careful preparation.

Watching the Declaration Come Off the Press

While Buchert completed his hand-crafted replica, Allen prepared his own public recreation of the first printing process at Orem’s Colonial Heritage Festival. KUTV reported that Allen planned to use an exact replica of an 18th-century printing press to produce 200 copies of the Declaration during the night of July 4.

Allen built the working press after discovering that borrowing one was not an option. “We thought, ‘How hard would it be to make one of these?’” Allen said. “They were doing it in the 1700s. Turns out it was pretty hard.”

Like Buchert, Allen recognized that the timing of the demonstration matters because the original printers moved with urgency. “That first printing happened late in the night of July 4th, early in the morning of July 5th, 1776,” Allen said. “They wasted no time getting this printed.”

Allen and his wife plan to begin at 8 p.m. on July 4 at SCERA Park and print exactly 200 reproductions through the night. The number matches the approximate size of the original 1776 print run.

Recreating the Press, the Paper and the Damage

Allen’s festival project also focuses on accuracy in the printing process itself. KUTV reported that Allen and his team duplicated the original paper, including its watermark, recreated a printing font that no longer exists and reproduced flaws found in the original document.

Allen said the damaged type in the original broadside mattered enough that his team did something that would normally be unthinkable. “There are nine pieces of type in the original that were damaged, so we had to damage the type as well,” he said. “I believe these will be the most accurate reproductions of the Dunlap printing ever produced.”

The team also plans to ink the press by hand using traditional printing balls instead of modern rollers. After applying the ink, printers will place each sheet of paper on the press and continue the process in view of festival visitors.

Organizers said the limited-edition reproductions will be available for purchase while supplies last. The demonstration gives visitors a chance to see the Declaration not only as a finished text but as something printers once had to physically produce under pressure.

What the Process Revealed

For Buchert, the long process of recreating the broadside changed the way he viewed the Declaration’s language. Spending so much time with each line and each letter forced him to notice the impact of the words as well as the difficulty of producing them.

“I think the language would be the dignity of the declaration,” he said. “The language chosen was really dignified for a complaint. The level of statesmanship that was put into this, and the bar it sets, was sort of the big revelation to me.”

Buchert also hopes the project helps students see the value of making things by hand. In his view, physical objects carry meaning because people invest time, skill and presence into creating them.

“I hope that they can see the importance of objects in our mortal experience and how the things that we do — the things that we make — can carry meaning that’s significant to other generations,” he said. “When we are creative in any form, it is important to be present in that creation. Because the process can have meaning.”

A Printed Sheet With a Story Still Visible

Buchert and Allen approached the Dunlap Broadside from different angles, but both bring the Declaration back to the pressroom where its first printed copies took shape. Buchert’s work reveals the painstaking craft inside the printed page itself, while Allen’s demonstration gives observers a rare chance to step back in time and imagine the overnight press run that first carried the Declaration into the world.

Together, their projects make the Declaration feel less distant and more tangible. They return readers to the moment when independence first became ink on paper, pulled from a press in the dark and sent out because the news could not wait until morning.

How does learning about the Dunlap Broadside change the way you picture July 4, 1776? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Holly Wallace

Holly Wallace is a writer and storyteller drawn to meaningful questions and overlooked details. Her work explores Latter-day Saint life and culture through faithful inquiry, inviting readers to pause, consider, and engage more deeply with what matters most.