The Hungerford Deed

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When a 200-year-old legal document anonymously arrived at his office, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives conservator William Bennett assumed it would be full of boring legal jargon. Instead, he found a juicy tale of family betrayal that would forever change what we thought we knew about the founding of the Smithsonian.

Speakers:

William Bennett, conservator at the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and Archives

Social: @rwilliab (Instagram), @SirWilliamB (Twitter)

Heather Ewing, author of The Lost World of James Smithson, and Associate Dean at New York Studio School

Social: @HPealeEwing

Richard Kurin, Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador-at-Large

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is SideDor, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX, I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:23.9	William Bennett remembers the morning a mysterious package showed up at his office.
0:29.9	Wrapped up like a baby in a blanket.
0:40.4	This was no baby.
0:41.4	It was a bundle of folded court documents, old ones, 235 years old, anonymously donated
0:49.2	to the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
0:51.9	William is a conservator at the Archives, and this was not the first mysterious pile of
0:56.3	old papers to come his way.
0:58.4	When he figured this one would probably be more or less like the others.
1:02.1	When I pulled this out of the container that it came to us in, I thought it was going
1:05.4	to be absolutely boring.
1:07.2	Drized dust, a whole lot of legal language, and not much interest.
1:12.5	But William was wrong.
1:14.2	Oh, so wrong.
1:16.7	He just didn't know it yet.
1:18.2	I heard said, Bill.
1:19.5	William led me through the Smithsonian Archives Reading Room, which is a light, airy space
1:23.9	full of large tables.
1:26.0	And in the middle of the room, laid out on a table was the mystery document, which turned
1:31.6	out to be an 18th century land deed.
1:35.3	This is like a small blanket.
1:36.6	Well, very much so.
	...

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