On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, Colonel John Nixon read the Declaration of Independence to a crowd in the State House Yard (now known as Independence Square) in the first public reading of the Declaration. After the reading the crowd shouted “God bless the free states of North America!” three times and then tore down the King’s coat of arms from the State House.

Later that day, the men of Philadelphia and from across Pennsylvania gathered in the State House to elect delegates to a convention to draft a new constitution for Pennsylvania. This vote was not limited to men with considerable property as in prior elections in Pennsylvania, and the voters elected several men who had not previously served in the government of the colony: farmer Robert Whitehill, farmer Thomas Smith, Dr. Thomas Young, Scottish immigrant James Cannon, recent immigrant and famous author Thomas Paine, the clerk to the Continental Congress Timothy Matlack, Irish immigrant George Bryan, Lambert Cadwalader, Jonathan Hoge, and James McLene, but also elected the more prominent Benjamin Franklin as Chairman, George Ross as vice-chairman and George Clymer as a delegate to the Convention. All three of the latter men had also been elected to the Continental Congress and would sign the Declaration of Independence.

Today, July 8, 2026, in Independence Square in Philadelphia, the National Park Service will reenact Col. Nixon’s reading of the Declaration of Independence. I am doubtful that the National Park Service will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the election of the little known delegates who would draft the most radical of the state constitutions during the Revolution.

Sources: Hogeland, Declaration at 179-81; https://politicalgraveyard.com/geo/PA/ofc/cncn.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Constitution_of_1776;https://inht.org/declarationreading/; https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/resources-declarationofindependence.htm