There was no front page banner, no screaming headline proclaiming freedom when the Maryland Gazette printed the Declaration of Independence on July 11, 1776.

Residents of Anne Arundel County who could read learned that delegates of the Association of United Colonies had formed something new in Philadelphia a week earlier.

The county's four-page weekly newspaper was the first in Maryland to carry the text of the founding document of the United States, sandwiching it on Page 3 between proclamations, legal notices, correspondence on military and shipping movements and descriptions of runaway slaves.

Now, for the first time...