Reading the Declaration
Andy was nine years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed at Philadelphia.
In August, some one brought a Philadelphia newspaper to the Waxhaws. It contained a portion of the Declaration. A crowd of Waxhaw Patriots gathered in front of the country store owned by Andy’s Uncle Crawford. They were eager to hear the Declaration read aloud. Andy was chosen to read it.
He did so proudly in a shrill, penetrating voice. He read the whole thing through without once stopping to spell out the words. And that was more than many of the grown men of the Waxhaws could do in those pioneer days, when frontier log-schoolhouses were few and far between.