When Michelle Eugenio was cleaning out her classroom at the Center School in Peabody, Massachusetts, she knew there was no telling what she’d find. Maybe half a moldy sandwich or a book report about Stuart Little. Little did she know she’d randomly discover a rare colonial-era document from 1792 in her fourth-grade classroom.
She has no idea where it comes from or how it got there; here’s what we do know. The document, encased in plastic, is a debt payment receipt from a guy named Jonathan Bates. He served in the Continental Army in 1780, and was born in Vermont. He paid his debt in April 1792. Other than that, the debt payment receipt is pretty mysterious.
Obviously, since the document was protected in plastic, it had to come from somewhere like a museum or a historical society, or possibly some private collection. Is it some show-and-tell item that got lost? Did some kid get sticky fingers at a museum, then freak out and hide his purloined item? There’s no telling.
Tags: Michelle Eugenio, Peabody, Massachusetts, Jonathan Bates, Center School, colonial-era document found in school, lost colonial document discovered, colonial-era IOU discovered
