A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland

have been a frequent issue between the postal authorities and the printers.
In a letter which will be quoted later, Goddard, in writing of himself, inti-
mated that more than any other American printer he had been badly used
by the ministerial Postoffice, and from another source¹ onelearns thathav-
ing become unfavorably known to the government as the proprietor of "a
very free press," he had suffered unusual oppression by the Post Office about
the year 1770, when he had been charged one pound sterling a week for the
deli very of three hundred and fifty papers to places outside of Philadelphia.
From his first coming to Baltimore, Goddard, who had learned his lesson,
seems to have had in mind a plan by the execution of which he might ren-
der himself independent of the established postal system, but it is doubtful
if at this time he was thinking of anything more ambitious than the estab-
lishment of a private line of riders between Philadelphia and his newly-
chosen abode.

In early issues of his journal in the summer and autumn of 1773, one
finds him advertising for reliable men to act as post riders. That he was
successful in obtaining them and that his plan already had begun to be en-
larged is made certain by the fact that on December 30, 1773 the news of
the Boston Tea Party was brought from New York to his office in Balti-
more by his own riders. About this time his idea seems to have advanced
from the embryo, for on February 17, 1774, Mary Katherine Goddard in-
formed the readers of the Maryland Journal that she would conduct the
newspaper and printing business of her brother during his absence from
Baltimore in the prosecution of a very important affair, "interesting to the
common liberties of all America." This was, of course, the establishment
of the "Constitutional Post Office," from which, and not from the British
colonial post, the United States Post Office derives its origin.

Following the announcement made by Miss Goddard which has been re-
ferred to, Goddard spent the ensuing months in an eager questing of men
and funds wherewith there might be inaugurated a post office system² to
supplant that one which had been conducted more or less satisfactorily since
its establishment in the colonies by an Act of Parliament in 1710. At this
time, Benjamin Franklin, although he had been resident in England for
about nine years, was holding under the British ministry the position of
Postmaster General of the colonies. There was general dissatisfaction with
the administration of the system, and although the great esteem in which

¹ American Archives, 4th Series, 1: 500.

² See American Archives, 4th Series, 1: 500 et seq. where are given copious extracts from letters and newspapers
of various colonies from Massachusetts to Virginia in which Goddard may be followed in his journeys and exer-
tions in the cause of a Constitutional Post Office.

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