Family Heirloom More Than a Dusty Memory : History: Document turns out to be a rare 1820s reproduction of the Declaration of Independence. It will go on display at Nixon Library.

Wilbur Wright had often looked with a curious eye at the creased and ragged document hanging on his office wall.

As a child, the 71-year-old Wright said, he saw the reproduction of this country’s Declaration of Independence hanging at his grandfather’s house in Pomona as early as the 1920s. After that, it gathered dust in his father’s closet for 16 years.

“He never said anything about it,” Wright said of his father. “As I reflect upon it now, he was a pretty stern gentleman. But I knew it was something because it had traveled--from Maryland to Missouri, to Omaha, to Pomona--in the family for 150 years.”

That’s why he asked a local historian in April to take a look at the calfskin print. Carefully examined by manuscript expert William Coleman of Laguna Beach, who has devoted nearly 10 years to locating and verifying similar works by an early American engraver, it was determined to be one of only 32 surviving copies commissioned in 1820 by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.

“It has lain dormant for a bunch of years,” Wright said. “Nobody in the family seemed to have much interest in it.”

So the family decided to donate the poster-size copy to the Richard Nixon Library and Birth Place in Yorba Linda, where it will be on permanent display beginning today.

Wright’s grandfather, who moved the family to California near the turn of the century, commissioned a family history in an attempt to determine who had acquired the document and when. According to family lore, “one day, when the family was living in Maryland, a . . . woman knocked on the door desiring to sell it,” Wright said. “They bought it and we have had it in the family since.” He thinks that happened in the 1840s.

But the details and exact date remain unknown because the family history commissioned by his grandfather was lost in 1975 when his parents moved into a retirement home, Wright said.

The document has been identified as an engraving by William J. Stone, who spent three years duplicating the parchment original. Adams, who went on to become President, feared that the original Declaration of Independence was showing signs of deterioration.

In 1823, the 201 engravings Stone produced from a copper plate were distributed among high officials in the White House, the U.S. Congress, various government agencies, and each of the states and territories of the union. Stone kept a copy for himself and the remainder were sent to colleges.

Although most of the copies have disappeared, there are 19 copies held in institutions and government offices and 13 in private collections--including Wright’s copy. In 1991, one of the copies was auctioned for $85,000.

Wright said he kept the framed copy in his office. His daughter, Susie Spreen of Laguna Niguel, said that after Wright underwent cancer surgery five years ago, he began tracing the document’s origins.

“I am happy to have it viewed by a lot of people,” Wright said. “I don’t need the money for it. I think people should be able to view and enjoy it.”