A mysterious package: Historic document from 1785 arrives at the state Republican party headquarters

Less than two weeks before the presidential primary this year, New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Chris Ager received a mysterious package.

Ager wondered if it was hate mail or a death threat, both of which he had received in the past. But his curiosity trumped any fear, and he decided to open it anyway.

Inside, Ager discovered a two-page letter from a man from New Orleans, along with a very old-looking 16-x-13-inch document.

“Enclosed is a contribution of a 1785 ‘Oath of Allegiance,’” the letter writer wrote.

“At first, I thought, ‘Is this for real?’ I wasn’t sure,” Ager said. “The postmark was from New Orleans, Louisiana, and so I’m like, ‘There’s a lot of crazy people down there.’”

Ager brought the document to State Archivist Ashley Miller, who quickly confirmed the document was in fact real. Moreover, it was historic.

The oath, penned by the first president of New Hampshire, was a commitment by a number of prominent Rockingham County men to “keep the peace” in the county and state during a profoundly fragile period in the nation’s early history.

Miller had never seen anything like it before, but due to a quirk in state law, she did not have the formal power to accept the document at the time. That changed in July, when a new law she spearheaded went into effect.

During a ceremony Wednesday afternoon, several months after Ager first laid eyes on the “Oath of Allegiance,” he formally donated it to the state’s archives collection.

No one was more excited than Virginia Drye, the chair of the New Hampshire Young Republicans and a Constitution-era history buff.

“I almost jumped up and down” when Ager presented the document at a Republican party executive board meeting, Drye said. “I was like, ‘Do you realize what you have in front of you?’”

The document is so meaningful, according to Drye, because it demonstrates how – during a period of instability between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the signing of the constitution in 1787 – New Hampshire’s leaders banded together and “showed allegiance to this young republic at a time that it was very fragile.”

The document, dated May 18, 1785, appoints more than a dozen men, including founding father Josiah Bartlett, as justices of the peace for Rockingham County. The men have the power and responsibility to “punish all persons . . . who threaten any others,” declares Meshech Weare, the then-president of New Hampshire.

“In order to keep the peace they needed people to say, ‘Yes, I will keep the peace,’” Drye said.

Prior to returning to New Hampshire, the oath resided for two years in the collection of Stanley Yavneh Klos, the New Orleans man who sent Ager the mysterious package.

Klos, 70, a real estate entrepreneur, former professional basketball player, and the 1994 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in West Virginia, has collected historic documents since the 1980s, when he discovered a trove of shipping papers from the 1700s in the attic of a home he bought in New Jersey.

Klos, who also operates a business excavating dinosaur fossils, has amassed a collection of thousands of documents, which he stores in an undisclosed location that he would describe only as “a very safe place.”

He purchased the “Oath of Allegiance” from an auction house in Virginia in February 2022 for $480, said Dana Linett, the president of the auction house.

“It’s a very, very historic revolutionary war period document, and it shows the mayhem that was created internally in portions of New Hampshire between the various residents and their loyalties,” Linett said.

Linett would not identify the auction house the document came from before it reached his.

Klos decided to part with the document to generate attention surrounding his proposal to expand the U.S. House of Representatives, which he argues would eliminate gerrymandering, diminish the influence of corporate funding in campaigns, spur bipartisanship, and address issues with the Electoral College. He believes New Hampshire’s 400-member House is the ideal example.

“New Hampshire has grown their House the way the founders have intended so that each representative’s constituents are at a manageable level,” Klos said in an interview. “They get to know their constituents, the constituents get to know them, the elections are not costly.”

“What would Meshech Weare do?” Klos asked.

Klos believed sending his letter and the document during the presidential primary could spearhead action. But, to his dismay, he heard nothing – not even an acknowledgment of receipt – until a reporter contacted him on Wednesday afternoon.

“It didn’t work. It was a most ineffective idea,” Klos acknowledged.

But, he said, “I’m just glad it ended up at the archives.”

Miller, the state archivist, is happy too – and she has a request.

“You would never expect a donation from the 1700s, but they’re out there, so check your basements, check your attics, check your grandparents’ attics,” she urged.

Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.