CLAREMONT — With gloved hands, City Planner deForest Bearse gently opened the cover of perhaps Claremont’s oldest document and turned a few of the first pages.

The writing is legible, but the pages are discolored and brittle, with edges that have deteriorated over time. The title on the well-worn cover is badly faded. Previously, tape was used to mend tears on the inside and the binding, which also has browned.

Discovered recently in a small box in the city’s Finance Department offices, the January 1765 charter book provides the opening chapters to the city’s more than 259-year history. Bearse was not sure how it ended up in city offices or how long it had been there. But now that it has been found, she is hoping to have it restored and possibly displayed for the public.

After several blank pages, the first writing is the charter issued by King George III, the names of the 70 individuals who received land grants and a small rudimentary map showing the town’s boundaries, 6 miles by 6 miles and containing 24,000 acres.

Several conditions attached to the grants included the requirement that for every 50 acres, the grantee had to clear and cultivate at least five acres every five years or forfeit the grant. All white pine and other pines “fitting for masts for the Royal Navy” had to be saved for that purpose, and a license was needed to fell trees. Failure to do so would result in forfeiture of the grant, the charter states.

While the charter book is dated January 1765, Claremont actually received its charter three months prior in late October 1764. What happened to the original is pure speculation.

Colin Sanborn, a former president of the Claremont Historical Society and researcher of Claremont history for about 40 years, and Fiske Free Library Librarian Mike Grace have researched the original charter question without finding a definitive answer.

In New Hampshire provincial state papers on the state’s early history, published in 1882, there are statements from early proprietors, the town’s first landowners, who looked for the charter.

In the early 1780s, the state wanted to record the charters of several towns, including Claremont, in the Secretary of State’s Office and asked the proprietors to deliver it.

In May 1782, several proprietors wrote to the Legislature asking if the state could use a copy of the charter (1765) until the original could be found because the original was “mislaid or by some ill-minded person conveyed away.”

A second letter to the Legislature in September 1782, written by Joseph Hubbard, stated that he, along with his brother, George, and Stephen and Barnibas Ellis, visited the home of Capt. Benjamin Sumner, the clerk to the proprietors, in November 1780, to obtain the charter. With Sumner not home, his wife showed them the proprietors’ book of records and told the men “there was no other charter in the house and had not been for some time,” Hubbard wrote.

“We then searched the book to see if the charter was in it but could not find it.”

Otis Waite recorded the charter word for word in his 1894 book on the 130-year history of Claremont.

Interestingly, only three of the original grantees — Samuel Ashley, Samuel Ashley Jr. and Olive Ashley — ever became inhabitants of the town. As early as 1767, the grantees, all from several Connecticut towns, were looking to sell their shares.

“It was an opportunity to make some money,” Sanborn said.

Bearse said a lot of the charter book describes the “laying out of the town and all the people who were involved in it.”

“It discusses how the lots are laid out, who got what and how they surveyed everything,” Bearse said.

The book also contains recordings of land sales and meetings of the proprietors into the late 1800s.

Bearse plans to seek a grant through the New Hampshire Moose Plate program, which raises money for conservation, heritage and preservation programs statewide.

A moose plate is a regular license plate with a moose logo on the left side.

At a recent City Council meeting, Bearse presented an explanation of the proposed repairs from the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, Mass.

The company explained the book’s current condition and the needed restoration work, including repairing the tears in the pages, washing the pages in ethanol, reducing discoloration, constructing a custom-fitted archival box, removing the tape and reducing the adhesive staining.

The center estimated the repair cost at $16,000.

“Putting scotch tape on it was bad,” Bearse said. “The most expensive part of the repair is removing the tape.”

Bearse said they are looking for a total repair, which would include reattaching the binding and stabilizing the pages “so you can hold it without fear of damage.”

If a grant is obtained, Bearse said the city would put the job out to bid and once the restoration is complete she would like to see the book in a glass case in City Hall so people can view it.

Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.