William and Mary Goddard, Printers and Public Servants

Bucks, Galloway succeeded in being re-elected in the years 1770 and 1772,
but Goddard's attacks seem so far to have shaken him that he contemplated
retiring from public life. From this step he was dissuaded by Franklin, who
retained esteem for his old friend of the Junta until the very eve of the
Revolution.¹

Even the small triumph which Goddard attained in harassing his enemy
cost him more than it came to, for with the financial support of Galloway
and Wharton withdrawn, and with constant dissension existing between
Goddard and Towne, the affairs of The Pennsylvania Chronicle fell to such
a depth that eventually creditors descended upon the property and took
possession of it. In a letter from William Strahan,² a London printer and
publisher, is to be read the beginning of the catastrophe. Writing to Frank-
lin on August 21, 1772, Strahan says:

"As you will probably write to Philadelphia by some of the Vessels now about to sail
thither, may I request the favour of you to remind Mr. Galloway of the Money due to me
for Types and Newspapers sent to Mr. Goddard by his order above four Years ago, and
which, as stated in my Letter to him of the 6th Deer. 1770. amounted to £172: 15: 2. I
wrote him the 7th of August last Year to which I have had no Answer.—It is surely high
time this Money was repaid, which I beg your Interposition to procure me without farther
Delay. It is hard I should suffer by the Madness and Ingratitude of Goddard whom I never
had the least Concern with. It was Mr. Galloway's Order that I obeyed; and to him I look
for my Reimbursement."³

By just what steps the final ruin of the business was consummated, it is
not clear, but it iscertain thatwithin twomonths after thedateof Strahan's
letter, the "mad" and "ungrateful" Goddard had begun to plan a retreat
from his difficult position. Drawn always southward by his changing for-
tunes, he now made proposals for the establishment of a printing house in
Baltimore, and in that city, less than a year later, he established himself in
business, as he has recorded, on the capital of "a single solitary guinea."⁴
The last issue of The Pennsylvania Chronicle bore the date of February 8,
1774, and when it expired with its three hundred and sixty-eighth number,
the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser could boast already six
months of vigorous life.

¹ Joseph Galloway, the Loyalist Politician, before cited. In a letter to Abel James, December 2, 1772 (Smyth,
A. H., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, 5: 461), Franklin says that he does not understand why James and
Fox were slighted in the election, "while Goddard was voted for by so great a number." This is the only intima-
tion which the author has seen that Goddard offered himself as a candidate for the Assembly or other office.

² William Strahan, printer and member of Parliament, b. 1715, d. 1785. He was the friend of Franklin and of
Dr. Samuel Johnson and the London agent of many Pennsylvania printers. It was to him that Franklin wrote
his celebrated letter at the outbreak of the Revolution, concluding with the words: "You are now my enemy, and
I am, Yours, B. Franklin."

³Franklin Papers in American Philosophical Society, III: 117.

⁴Maryland Journal, August 14, 1792.

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