Historic Hanna's Town marks July 4th with reading of the Declaration of Independence

American colonists drafted plenty of documents before the Declaration of Independence.

In a fledgling Westmoreland County that, officially speaking, was only two years old in 1775, citizens drafted the Hanna’s Town Resolves, a response to the battles of Lexington and Concord during the Revolutionary War.

“Resolved unanimously, That there is no reason to doubt that the same system of tyranny and oppression will (should it meet with success in Massachusetts Bay) be extended to every other part of America,” its authors wrote. “It is therefore become the indispensable duty of every American, of every man who has any public virtue or love for his country, or any bowels for posterity, by every means which God has put in his power, to resist and oppose the execution of it; that for us we will be ready to oppose it with our lives and fortunes.”

The Hanna’s Town Resolves did not declare independence — in fact a section specifically recognizes King George III as “our lawful and rightful King” — but it was a way of putting the British on notice Americans across the colonies would not simply abandon their rights to the whim of the crown.

It wasn’t long after that the country did officially declare its independence. The document making that declaration was read aloud Sunday afternoon at Historic Hanna’s Town in Hempfield, by members of Proctor’s Militia, who also were on hand showing the tools of daily life in the American colonies.