It was a goose bump moment for Holly Kinyon when the 1776 broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence was removed from its protective box in the basement of the Museum of the American Revolution on Monday.
"It's hard to describe how much this means to me and to my family," Kinyon said.
Kinyon, who's 59 and from Malibu, is a direct descendant of declaration signer John Witherspoon.
She bought the broadside at auction in 2017 for a reported $1.5 million.
"I didn't think the chance would come again in my lifetime to be able to connect our Witherspoon lineage with the actual declaration," she said.
"There's maybe a dozen copies of the Philadelphia printing by (John) Dunlap. There are only five copies of this New York printing by John Holt. This was only the fifth one that's ever come to light. So many of them, I think, were probably loved to death," Stephenson said.
The broadside will be on display until the end of the year.