Nails Does Declare!

Sharpen your quills. Word search is back.

No clues yet!

This one took some legwork (penwork? quillwork?) in the year of the big 2-5-0 anniversary. The only logical instruction given on the face of the word search was to "FIND SIGNERS FROM EACH STATE IN ORDER"

With reps from 13 then-British Colonies signing the Declaration of Independence (Nails Does Declare!), some of you quickly realized that perhaps some Caesar-shifting was called for. Indeed, each SHIFT of the word search revealed the last names of the DOI signers from that state (in the order of their eventual admission). When you "eliminated" all the signers (and the initial instructions), you were left with a smattering of letters that only made sense when read backwards, line by line, in the ROT-13 variation:

"MEMBER OF FIVE WHO WAS CALLED HOME BEFORE SIGNING IT"

There's only one man to whom this description applies: Robert Livingston, a member of the "Committee of Five" who was called home to New York before signing (he sent his cousin, Philip, who you already found in Shift 11, to sign the document in his place!).