 What became of the document between 1776 and the mid @-@ 19th century is uncertain , but it eventually came into the possession of Mr. Patrick Anderson McEwen ( a descendant of Governor Benedict Arnold ) of Windsor , Ontario , Canada , from whom it passed to Isaac N. Arnold , president of the Chicago Historical Society . A copy was then made by Edwin Hubbard in 1878 , and ultimately published under his name the following year . ( It turns out that Isaac N. Arnold was descended from Thomas Arnold of Watertown , and thus not from William Arnold of Pawtuxet . ) As with any historical document , genealogists and historians wanted to know how reliable it was . Once the original parish registers were discovered by a researcher in 1902 , it was demonstrated that every entry in Arnold 's original document that could be corroborated with these parish records in England was correct and precise to the minutest detail . 
