Timothy Matlack Scribe of the Declaration of Independence

On July 4 1776 the Declaration of Independence was read aloud to a crowd gathered outside the Pennsylvania State House. It was engrossed on vellum later in the month and delegates began signing the finely penned document in early August. The man who read the Declaration and later embossed it--the man with perhaps the most famous penmanship in American history--was Timothy Matlack a Philadelphia beer bottler who strongly believed in the American cause. A disowned Quaker and the grandson of an ...See More