She Does It Again!

Update April 4, 2011

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke graduate student Julia Gaffield returned to the British National Archives in London last month to continue research for her doctoral dissertation. On her second day she found yet another copy of Haiti's Declaration, dated January 1804. This is the second known printed copy of the historic declaration, joining the one Gaffield found a year earlier in a discovery that attracted worldwide attention [see below].

The latest document is in a different format from the prior discovery. It is one large poster-sized page instead of an 8-page pamphlet.

Gaffield found the large page in the archives’ admiralty records while researching the relationship that some British islands had with Haiti following the Haitian Revolution. A cover letter with the document indicates Sir John Thomas Duckworth, the British commander in Jamaica, sent the document from Port Royal, Jamaica, to the Commissioners of the Admiralty in London in March 1804.

News Archive	Julia's Moment of Discovery	The Document’s Origins

The Declaration’s Text	Haiti's Revolution and the United States	Duke and the Study of Haiti