Ball State displays documents from US founding fathers
A new Ball State University exhibit features six original documents signed by the United States’ founding fathers. As IPR’s Daniel Huber reports, the documents show a different consideration of how we view our nation’s history.
Audio Transcript
Included in the documents on display at Bracken Library, you can see a book order confirmation from Thomas Jefferson, a survey made by George Washington, and a letter to the Office of Discount and Deposit written by Alexander Hamilton.
Archive specialist Russell Knapp created the exhibit after finding the documents in Ball State’s archives.
“I think looking at all these materials,” said Knapp, “you can find a real sense of like, oh, this is where we came from. The Enlightenment movement, print culture, like the birth of our country, these high ideals that we haven’t always lived up to. I think that can be really helpful.”
Other documents were written by Benjamin Franklin, Robert Livingston and the Marquis de Lafayette.
“I think being able to have some of these physical documents, even if some of these letters themselves are more monotonous, they’re about purchasing books or saying hello to your friend or something like that,” Knapp said. “They’re not like these grand political treatises. It’s really fun to be able to hold those in your hands and experience that history firsthand and say, ‘wow, Thomas Jefferson wrote this letter right here.’”
The documents came from a five-volume set of “The Life of George Washington” by Washington Irving, accompanied by another album with labeled documents. This was won in an auction by George Ball, one of Ball State’s founding brothers. It was donated to the Bracken Library by George’s daughter, Elizabeth Ball. It wasn’t until this year that the archivists at Bracken discovered they possessed original documents from multiple founding fathers.
The exhibit also includes the earliest prints of the Bible in North America and a section on the French encyclopedia.
First-year animation student Jesse Smith said the exhibit is a reminder that history is what you make it.
“I love storytelling that compels people to take action and spread new innovative ideas, and that’s a lot of what this is.”
The exhibit is expected to be up for the rest of the academic year.
Daniel Huber is a news fellow with Ball State Public Media’s Public Media Accelerator student fellowships.
