460 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



"cabinet of curiosities" to become the storehouse of the Nation's treas- 

 ures. Cognizant of the fact that the National Museum had been offi- 

 cially designated as the Government repository for objects of histori- 

 cal importance, many Government agencies deposited in the Museum 

 specimens which they did not have the facilities to preserve or exhibit. 



In 1921 the Department of State, on Executive order, turned the 

 original document of the Declaration of Independence over to the 

 Library of Congress, and a few months later the Declaration of 

 Independence Desk was sent to the National Museum. 



During the years in which this desk has been on display at the 

 National Museum, a number of replicas have come to light. All these 

 reproductions seem to date from the centennial year, and it is assumed 

 that they were made at that time with the consent of the owners of the 

 desk. In construction they are exact copies of the original desk. Each 

 replica also bears under the writing surface a facsimile of Jefferson's 

 note to Joseph Coolidge, Jr., so perfectly done that it seems identical 

 with the note attached to the original desk. Endless confusion has 

 resulted from these replicas as they are inherited by descendants of 

 the persons who first acquired the desks, or as they pass into the hands 

 of others who have no knowledge of the fact that such reproductions 

 had been made. 



The most famous of these replicas received a great deal of publicity 

 in 1925 when newspapers in America carried a front-page story stating 

 that the desk on which Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of 

 Independence was then in the Bismarck Museum in Berlin, Germany. 

 The story continued that the desk had been given to Prince Otto von 

 Bismarck, on the occasion of his eighty-first birthday, by Thomas 

 Jefferson Coolidge, great-grandson of Thomas Jefferson and son of 

 Joseph Coolidge, Jr., who was the United States Minister to France 

 from 1892 to 1896. Public sentiment demanded the return of the desk 

 to the United States, and it was reported that the Bismarck family 

 could at last be persuaded to part with the desk for a price. Fortu- 

 nately, when this stage of the transaction was reached, a Jefferson 

 expert advised the authorities that the original desk had been given to 

 the United States Government by the Coolidge heirs in 1880,' 



It is interesting to note, in view of this newspaper story, that in 1899, 

 when Thomas Jefferson Coolidge presented the Jefferson papers to the 

 Massachusetts Historical Society, he stated : ^° 



Several copies were made of it [the desk], and I was amused in reading an 

 essay by Smalley, that on visiting Bismarck he found a desk there which the 

 statesman thought was the original. Undoubtedly one of the copies had been 

 presented or sold to the great German. 



• Kimball, Marie, op. clt. 



!• MassachusettB Historical Society, op. cit. 



