John Nixon gave the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776, a moment remembered for America250.
The reading took place at noon on July 8, 1776, in the yard of the Pennsylvania State House, the building now called Independence Hall. Nixon was a member of Philadelphia’s Committee of Inspection and a local civic figure.
The reading was one of several early public proclamations. Accounts also place simultaneous readings that day in Trenton, New Jersey, and Easton, Pennsylvania. These events helped communicate Congress’s decision to people who could not read the document themselves.
John Hancock is often associated with the Declaration because he presided over Congress and signed it prominently, while Thomas Jefferson wrote the principal draft. Neither man gave Philadelphia’s first public reading.