The Declaration of Independence was fading away, and the federal government had no plan to restore it. A Bohemian immigrant named Theodore Ohman did. Jenny Beth Martin sits down with Mark Hill, owner of the Theodore Ohman collection and founder of BigParty250.com, for the story of the immigrant lithographer who spent decades creating exact restorations of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, then spent 25 years putting them on classroom walls across America. Ohman was taught the Declaration as a schoolboy in Bohemia under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and never forgot it. After arriving in America in 1912, he found the original Declaration faded and torn, so he tracked down an 1823 William Stone print and the 1903 Handy glass-plate negatives and rebuilt the document letter by letter. He printed his Declaration in 1942 and his Constitution, with the Bill of Rights, in 1953, then sold sets to hometown banks town by town so every local school could hang them. Mark Hill explains how the collection survived in crates for decades, why the Library of Congress cannot explain the stone print it received in 1939, how the National Archives reacted to Ohman's glass negatives, and the signature Constitution bearing President Trump's signature after five tries. Now Hill is restarting Ohman's mission for America's 250th anniversary. Learn more at teapartypatriots.org and jennybethshow.com.
Mark Hill is the owner of the Theodore Ohman collection and the founder of BigParty250.com. With his brother, Hill purchased the complete Ohman collection in 1995 — the original lithographs, glass plates, and printing plates behind Ohman's restorations of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution — and he is now carrying Ohman's every-school mission into America's 250th anniversary.
Key topics:
Timestamped breakdown:
00:00 — The mission: the Declaration and Constitution in every school in America
01:33 — Who was Theodore Ohman: a schoolboy in Bohemia who never forgot the Declaration
03:05 — Ohman's authentic restoration: the William Stone print and the Handy negatives
05:13 — The 1953 Constitution lithograph with the Bill of Rights
05:51 — A set in every school: 25 years of selling sets to hometown banks
07:35 — How Mark Hill ended up with the collection
12:21 — Human Events sells 1,200 original Declarations in six months
16:01 — The Library of Congress mystery: a stone print with no record
19:34 — The mission today: America's 250th and finding a partner
23:00 — Human nature, checks and balances, and why socialism always ends in tyranny
25:36 — On-camera tour: glass plates, silvering, and the printing plates
31:17 — The signature Constitution and President Trump's five tries
33:24 — Promo code JENNY and putting these documents in your local school
Links mentioned:
BigParty250.com — the Ohman prints, the Ohman story, and the signature-piece photo gallery
jennybethshow.com — all episodes
teapartypatriots.org — Tea Party Patriots Action