HALLOWELL — When a copy of the Declaration of Independence comes to City Hall this weekend, it’ll have new meaning to Jack Turner: His eighth-generation grandfather, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, was an original signer.
It’s the end of a long process for Turner, 58, a Sidney jeweler with a shop in downtown Hallowell who was adopted and didn’t know who his birth parents were until Maine lawmakers unsealed adoption records in 2009. In June, he was accepted into The Society of the Lees of Virginia, a group that says it has more than 900 members in the United States and abroad.
On his paternal side, Turner is part of a prestigious family that produced many famous figures in Virginia and U.S. politics. Richard Henry Lee made a motion in the Second Continental Congress that produced the declaration, and he and his brother, Francis Lightfoot Lee, signed it in 1776.
Robert E. Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the Civil War, was one of their descendants.
Hallowell will display its copy of the Declaration of Independence – circulated in the region in the days after its adoption and appraised at $1.2 million – at events commemorating the Fourth of July from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Photography using cellphones and cameras will be prohibited to shield the document from light, but Turner hopes organizers can make an exception for him and one of his sons.
“We’re going to take a picture next to it if we can,” Turner said. “It’d be nice.”
Proving the Lee link didn’t come easily.
In 1957 at age 17, his birth father, Ted Goldsborough of Pennsylvania, worked at a summer camp in Belgrade and had a relationship with 16-year-old Charlene Ellis, a local girl. He learned she was pregnant with Turner when her mother wrote him a letter that October.
Since the two lived so far apart, the families agreed to a settlement. Goldsborough’s family would pay Ellis $1,000 and his name would be left off the birth certificate. The baby was put up for adoption and taken in by Harland and Betty Turner, schoolteachers from Vassalboro.
Turner said he had “a great life” with them and always knew he was adopted, but his adoptive parents didn’t tell him about his birth family. After getting his birth certificate, he connected with his birth mother, who had married and now lives in Oakland, and then called Goldsborough after getting the phone number from Ellis. Turner said he has had a good relationship with both since then.
When Goldsborough first got out of the car on a visit to Maine, Turner said, “it was a picture of me 20 years from now.”
On the same visit, Goldsborough also told Turner of the Lee connection, which he has researched. Turner had trouble getting into the Lee society because of his adoption, but he was allowed in after providing DNA test results matching him to Goldsborough.
“It’s exciting,” Turner said. “What’s the chances of this?”
Goldsborough is a history buff, but he said he’s against “ancestor worship” and helped Turner trace his roots only after he showed interest.
“If Jack’s interested in that, fine,” Goldsborough said.
“But does that make him any better of a person because he’s a descendant of a Lee? Not to me it doesn’t.”
But the newfound father is happy with how his son turned out. He’s also a retired teacher, and he said the Turners raised him the same way he would have.
“I am very pleased with our relationship and what he has achieved,” Goldsborough said.
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