Would you believe me if I told you a lot of people believe this one — and it's not obvious at all unless somebody's already told you? Here's what the record actually shows.
The signed, engrossed United States Constitution — the actual four pages on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. — is written on parchment, not paper made from hemp fiber. Parchment is animal skin, specially treated and stretched (commonly calfskin). It isn't paper of any kind, hemp or otherwise. That's confirmed directly by the National Archives, which holds and displays the original document.
This myth didn't come from nowhere. Hemp really was a major, legal crop in colonial and early America — grown for rope, sailcloth, and cordage, and at points even required by law in some colonies. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington both grew it. None of that is in dispute.
The confusion is usually between two different things: hemp cultivation being real and common, and the founding documents themselves being physically made of hemp. The first is history. The second doesn't hold up — and it's become common enough as a claim that it has its own name: the “U.S. Constitution hemp paper hoax.”
“The Constitution (or the Declaration) was written on hemp paper.”
The signed Constitution is on animal-skin parchment. Hemp was a real, legal crop of the era — but that's a separate fact from what the document is made of.
This is the version of the myth that's a little harder to wave off completely. It's been reported that early drafts of the Declaration were written on hemp paper — paper at the time was commonly made from hemp or linen rag, not wood pulp like today. But the final, signed, engrossed copy of the Declaration — the one held at the National Archives — is, like the Constitution, on parchment. Not hemp paper.
The signed Constitution: parchment (animal skin). Confirmed — National Archives
The signed Declaration of Independence: also parchment. Confirmed — National Archives
Early drafts of the Declaration on hemp-based paper: reported, but not the document that survives and was signed. Disputed / unconfirmed as fact
Why bother with a fact this small? Because "I thought I knew this and I didn't" is exactly the moment this site exists for. Nobody's born knowing what parchment is versus paper, and there's no reason to feel foolish for repeating something that sounded true and got passed around for years. The fix isn't embarrassment — it's just looking it up once and moving on with the right fact.
This is the first entry in that question, not the last. If you've got one you've always wondered about — a founding-era claim that sounded right but you were never sure of — that's exactly what the next Baby Civics 101 page is for.