Field Trip: Real & Fake Texas Declaration of Independence Documents
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HOST: The Texas Declaration of Independence declared a free and independent Republic of Texas, permanently severing ties with Mexico in 1836. Appraiser Wes Cowan met up with ROADSHOW at the Texas State Library and Archives to highlight a story about the cherished document and fraud.
APPRAISER:
This is a story as big as Texas itself. It involves oversized personalities, it involves oodles of money, and it involves faking some of the cornerstone imprints of the history of Texas. The story starts to unravel in the late 1980s, but it really stretches back probably sometime to the late '60s or early '70s, when there is a sudden interest in Texas history. And there are plenty of people who are willing to pay big money for imprints like this. And this says, "We are free from Mexico, baby," and if you're a collector, that's a thing you've got to have.
HOST: There were about 1,000 of these broadsides...
APPRAISER:
Originally printed, that's right.
HOST: So how did it come to be that we even discovered there was a scandal, that these fakes were happening?
APPRAISER:
Well, you know, look, in the early '70s, only a handful of copies were known to exist. And then, all of a sudden, there were more copies, and more copies, and more copies. Where were these all coming from? If it weren't for a printer and book dealer, a guy named Tom Taylor, we would not know this today. Tom had sold three copies. We're not talking about a few hundred dollars in the '70s, we're talking about $20,000, $30,000 apiece…
HOST: Certainly.
APPRAISER:
…that he was selling. And he started to get a little suspicious, and other dealers were also becoming a little suspicious, so Taylor, the ethical guy that he was, he said, "Boy, I don't want to be selling any fakes. "Let me look at some known copies and compare them "with some of the ones that have appeared on the marketplace in recent years," and pretty quickly discovered some discrepancies between the known original and these more recent copies that had appeared in the marketplace. The one here on the left is an original copy of the 1836 printing of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The one on the right is the fake. The fakes were a little bit bigger. There are corrected pieces of typeface, and there is a spelling error in the fake.
HOST: The telltale spelling error.
APPRAISER:
The telltale spelling error. But let me tell you, these fakes fooled a lot of people for many, many years. As Taylor began investigating where all the fakes came from, three names kept turning up. And before long, he was able to pretty definitively identify who the faker was and who were the two people that were then selling the fakes.
HOST: I understand none of them are alive today.
APPRAISER:
All dead.
HOST: Were any of them brought to justice on this? Were they ever arrested?
APPRAISER:
No. Tom Taylor, to his credit, when he discovered that two documents that he had sold were fakes, he went immediately to his customers and said, "I sold you a fake. Here's your money back."
HOST: Wow-- now let's play a game. What if one of those original 1,000 just kind of... just escapes, shows up someday, and we get our hands on it? What will we expect to pay for this?
APPRAISER:
I think that if one of these originals appeared in a public auction, it would easily bring more than $1 million.
HOST: So I should stop looking, or save my money and look really hard.
APPRAISER:
I think that's right.
HOST: But it bears to mind, these fakes have a place in history. This is a historical moment, as well, for Texas collectors, and there are only a few of those that we know still exist, and do they have value?
APPRAISER:
Well, you know, look. I mean, I think that if I were to be so fortunate as to be an owner of one of these, I'd love to have a fake for my collection. And I probably wouldn't mind paying maybe up to $1,000 for one.
HOST: But more of a novelty than an actual collectible?
APPRAISER:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the story is so great.
HOST: It's an amazing story. Great to hear from you, Wes, thanks so much.
APPRAISER:
It was my pleasure. It's great to see these.
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