Mary Katharine Goddard, a Baltimore printer and the city’s first woman postmaster, played a singular role in the dissemination of the Declaration of Independence. In January 1777, as the Continental Congress convened in Baltimore to escape the British threat to Philadelphia, Goddard was invited to print the first version of the Declaration to include the names of all signatories. By affixing her own name to the broadside as printer, she committed an act that could have been prosecuted as treason—demonstrating both extraordinary courage and a visionary sense of historical significance. The Maryland Center for History and Culture holds a copy of this broadside. Goddard also published the Maryland Journal, and Baltimore Advertiser throughout the revolutionary period.
Interviewees
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Martina Kado
- Vice President of Research and France-Merrick Director of the H. Furlong Baldwin Library, Maryland Center for History and Culture
