Mary Katherine Goddard learned the printing and newspaper business at the Providence Gazette and Country Journal, published by her younger brother William and financed by their widowed mother. She followed William on his next two ventures, a newspaper in Philidelphia and then the Maryland Journal in Baltimore.

Mary Katharine appears to have had better business sense than her brother. It's probably a good thing in 1773, he left her to run the newspaper.  She removed her brother's name and printed the Maryland Journal under M.K. Goddard.

She used the power of her press to support the colonists in their complaints against Britian. Following the first armed skirmishes at Lexington and Concord in 1775 she wrote in the Journal:

“What think ye of Congress now? That day. . . evidenced that Americans would rather die than live slaves!”

The following year in early December 1776, the British captured New York and besieged the Continental Army in New Jersey. Worried, the Continental Congress packed the Declaration of Independence into a wagon and ducked out of Philadelphia to safety in Baltimore. 

After Christmas when Congress got news General Washington had crossed the Delaware and won battles in Trenton and Princeton, members decided to order a second printing of the Declaration of Independence. 

Washington crossing the Delaware, near Trenton, New Jersey, America Christmas 1776, by artist Leutze, Emanuel, 1816-1868. Courtesy Library of Congress

The Continental Congress has set up headquarters in Baltimore near Mary Katharine Goddard's printing office/bookstore/post office and newspaper. John Hancock approached Mary and ordered 200 copies of the Declaration to be distributed throughout the colonies, hoping to unite and rally folks to support the revolution.

There was a huge difference between the initial Declaration printed by John Dunlap in Philadelphia on the night of July 4, 1776, and this second printing by Mary Katharine. 

Known as the Goddard Broadside, it was the first to use the title The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America, and it was the first to include the names of the men who signed it.

This, as you know, was printed evidence of treason. It named names and Mary Katherine added hers at the bottom.

Printer Mary Katharine Goddard's name is inked into history. NPS photo

President of Congress John Hancock sent one to each of the states, accompanied by the following words:

"As there is not a more distinguished Event in the History of America, than the Declaration of her Independence--nor any that in all Probability, will so much excite the Attention of future Ages...that it may henceforth form a Part of the Archives of your State and remain a lasting Testimony of your approbation of that necessary & important Measure."
 

While the Goddard Broadside was the first copy of the Declaration of Independence meant to be preserved, historically, broadsides or broadsheets were printed to be posted on walls and then thrown away. 

Broadsides proclaimed events, news, announced laws, offered political commentary etc. They were the most common forms of printed material between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Today, broadside printing is done by smaller printers and publishers as a fine art, producing historical documents in a modified form.

Mindy Belloff, owner of Intima Press in New York City, is the first contemporary printer to recreate the American Declaration of Independence with historically accurate typeface and paper.

As a feminist artist, she suggested Americans still grapple today with some of the language, particularly the sentence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. " 

Mindy Belloff, artist and printer who recreated the Declaration of Independence.

"Setting the Declaration in type was enlightening in many ways, as my thoughts throughout the process were of Mary Katharine in her print shop during the cold month of January, not having 21st-century amenities," Mindy told CBS News. 

"I could not help but wonder how Mary Katharine must have felt being entrusted to print this stunning proclamation while setting each letter of the text ‘all Men are created equal."

We might also wonder if Mary Katharine thought about race. She descended from a Rhode Island Colony Plantation family and the 1790 census documents one free person besides herself in her household and four enslaved people.

No drawings or paintings of Mary Katharine exist today. None of her letters survived and all that she revealed of herself in her journalism was her passion for the revolutionary cause. At her death Mary Katharine freed Belinda Starling, an enslaved woman and willed her personal property to her.

As a businesswoman and journalist, Mary Katherine Goddard made her own money and lived by herself, an embodiment of the independent spirit of her era. 

“Mary Katharine was an incredibly brave woman for her time," said Mindy Belloff. "By her actions, she was clearly a pioneer for women’s rights and freedom of the press.”  

Learn more about the Belloff Broadside here...

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