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He came up with the idea to present the pope a piece of Philadelphia’s past shortly after this visit was announced — which wasn’t long after DeMartino got his hands on those ripped-out remnants of the home of the Declaration of Independence. The history buff and entrepreneur had learned about this wood in old newspaper stories, and had been trying for several years to buy some.

When he finally did, “I’m sitting here with this Independence Hall wood, and the pope is coming to Philadelphia,” DeMartino remembers. But when he approached the city and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia about his plan, he got the same answer: The Vatican was actively discouraging gifts for the pope.

DeMartino, a Catholic who goes to church at St. Mary of the Pines in West Creek, persisted. When Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter’s office first put him off, DeMartino went to City Councilman Mark Squilla — whose district includes Independence Hall. “I figured he’s Catholic, he’s Italian. He got back to me in five minutes,” DeMartino said.

“I thought it was a neat idea. It’s part of Philadelphia, and part of history,” said Squilla, who put DeMartino in touch with the right people in the administration to say the mayor could present a pen to the Pope. After some back-and-forth, they sounded interested, so DeMartino told one of his craftsmen to start creating and engraving.

But last weekend, he got an email from Nutter’s communications director, Desiree Peterkin-Bell, saying she had “just learned yesterday from the Vatican (that) there won't be an opportunity to present gifts to Pope Francis at all.”

Then on Tuesday, DeMartino was on his way into Philadelphia, taking a neighbor to a hospital for surgery. He was on the Ben Franklin Bridge when he got a sudden call from the mayor’s office — asking him if he could bring the pens to Philadelphia by 1 p.m., because the mayor could give a few gifts after all. But DeMartino didn’t have the pens with him, and he couldn’t get home and back to the city by that deadline.

So he made his delivery Thursday. He got an official receipt, and he hopes the Pope will at least see or hear about his pen — not that DeMartino ever had high hopes about it becoming some personal papal property.

“I don’t have any illusions about the Pope using that pen himself,” says DeMartino, who traces part of his fascination with history back to a grade-school visit to Cape May. More likely, “It’s going to end up in the Vatican archives, a literal piece of American history with all the manuscripts. ... And 500 years from now, somebody is going to open a box and there’s going to be this pen — a piece of Independence Hall.”

DeMartino can document the history, or provenance, of the wood for his papal pen back to Samuel Reeves, Independence Hall’s superintendent during a renovation and expansion project in 1897.
And he gives the detailed story of that “Witness Wood®,” in his copyrighted name, on his web site, historysalvage.com/ . (He also has copies of the officially sealed, notarized documents to prove authenticity.)

Some of the discarded floorboards and handrails were churned out into souvenirs for major American anniversaries, such as 1876 and 1976. And the latest owner had the leftover wood stored in a barn on New York’s Long Island. But both the owner and that lumber, which dates back to Independence Hall’s 1732 construction, were aging.
“It took two years of me calling regularly, talking to him, trying to convince the family to give some up. It was a process,” DeMartino said. “The wood has been sitting around for more than two hundred years, and the family was worried about it disintegrating.”
Then as soon as he got the historic wood, he heard about a bit of modern history hitting Philadelphia, right down the highway from his home — and just down the street from Independence Hall.
Contact: 609-272-7237
MDeangelis@pressofac.com

Through acquisition, History Salvaged, LLC has added the only documented Original Construction Witness Wood® removed from Independence Hall to its inventory!

Independence Hall is arguably the birthplace of the United States of America, home of the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Liberty Bell.

This Independence Hall Witness Wood® includes pieces of beams that supported the floor when both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and signed. These Independence Hall Witness Wood® beams and railings that had once felt the footsteps and touch of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams, among others, were torn up as part of a renovation in 1898. Fortunate to find and acquire the wood, we are developing a Limited Edition series of heirloom quality, precious and semi-precious metal fine writing instruments and cuff links that will present this historic Witness Wood® with the reverence and respect that it deserves.

Provenance - Independence Hall

Completed in 1735 it took two years to build Independence Hall home of the 1st Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence and where the Constitution was debated and put to paper.

During the renovation of Independence Hall in 1897-98, 16 of the original beams holding up the floor on which the giants of the era debated the future of the 13 Colonies were replaced under the supervision of the project manager and superintendent of the Independence Hall, Samuel Reeves. Rather than discarding the beams, Reeves retained possession of the old timbers.

In 1912 Reeves sold the beams to John S. McQuade a builder and member of the Philadelphia City Council for the purposes of cutting them up and making “relics”, but McQuade stored the beams for 12 years and in 1924 sold them to two brothers Walter and Clarence Deisroth owners of a paper box company in Philadelphia.

The Deisroth’s reduced some beams to 100,000 slivers and sold them as souvenirs during the Sesquicentennial Exposition of 1926.

In 1956 the Deisroth’s company went into bankruptcy and at auction Mr. Henry Gouse a retired sales engineer and the Mid-Atlantic Tennis Champion of the 1940s bought the wood at auction. Along with what was left of the timbers thousands of chips and 20 gallons of sawdust, byproduct of producing the 100,000 slivers was included in the lot .

Grouse stored the beams in a barn on his property on the outskirts of Philadelphia where he made gavels out of some of the beams and presented them over the years to: President Eisenhower, President Nixon, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and other political leaders. Grouse also gave 4 of the beams to Independence Hall and the National Park Service, confirmed in National Park Service letter acknowledging “the gift”.

In 1975 Gouse was in his 80’s and his ex-wife “reluctantly” sold the remaining woodpile to an artist and attorney from whose estate we have been able to acquire the remaining Witness Wood®.

Mrs. Grouse only sold the Witness Wood® because of the high cost of living and her economic situation, she simply could not longer afford to keep the timbers and sold the Witness Wood® with the understanding that it would not be desecrated.

The new owners subsequently cut up most of the remaining wood again into slivers, producing thousands of history cards and memorabilia that were sold during the Bi-Centennial in 1976 all over the country and in many major department stores.

The remnant wood has remained drying out and deteriorating in storage since the 1970’s until our recent acquisition.