Life-size replicas of the United States’ founding documents are coming to Bladen County.
Copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will be permanently displayed outside the Bladen County government office in Elizabethtown. The Civil Rights Amendments will also be on display.
Bladen County officials collaborated with the nonprofit Foundation Forward, Inc. for the project. Foundation Forward has completed 78 installations of Charters of Freedom across the country, including 44 in North Carolina.
Charles Peterson, chairman of the Bladen County Board of Commissioners, said many people never make it to Washington, D.C., to see the original copies of the documents at the National Archives.
“It’s going to be one of the greatest things that’s happened to our county as far as displays and monuments,” Peterson said.
Peterson said some residents have already expressed appreciation for having a tangible way to learn about the country’s origins.
Vance Patterson and Mary Jo Patterson started Founding Forward in Burke County after visiting the National Archives in 2011. The couple hoped to bring the experience to communities across the nation.
“Seeing something our founding fathers had actually penned, and then seeing their signatures – Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Rutledge, Wilson, and the others – I just got goosebumps,” Vance Patterson said in a press release from Bladen County. “And then when we moved over and saw those first three words of the Constitution, We the People, I actually got a lump in my throat.”
Vance Patterson, a businessman, ran unsuccessfully in the 2012 Republican primary for North Carolina’s 11th district in the U.S. House. He lost to Mark Meadows.
A dedication ceremony for the completed installation will be held at 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 2, at 106 E. Broad St., Elizabethtown.
