William and Mary Goddard, Printers and Public Servants

issue of the paper was one in which George Washington of Mt. Vernon in
Virginia offered for sale twenty thousand acres of western lands.

On November 2oth the publisher of the Maryland Journal apologized
once more for the irregular issue and delivery of his paper, but he pledged
himself, now that he had returned from the north restored in health, hence-
forward to make its publication the primary obj ect of his attention. It seemed
for a few months that he had been sincere in making this promise to his
public, but clearly he had made it without reckoning on the attraction of
that other and more absorbing interest which was gradually taking posses-
sion of his thoughts. In February 1774, his sister, Mary Katherine Goddard,
assumed control of the newspaper for what she doubtless thought would
be the temporary absence of her brother. A year later, however, he had not
returned to take up his responsibilities and his name was removed from the
imprint of the journal, where it did not reappear until nearly a decade had
passed. During the first two years of this period Goddard was busy at a
task for the successful performance of which he has been given credit, but
only scant praise, by historians; that is, the establishment of the postal sys-
tem which was afterwards taken over by the Continental Congress, and
which exists today as the United States Post Office.

WILLIAM GODDARD AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE
"CONSTITUTIONAL POST OFFICE"

In seeking for the beginnings of Goddard's interest in American postal
operations it is necessary to go very far back indeed in his life, for at one
time, Dr. Giles Goddard had been postmaster of New London, and it is
probable that throughout the receptive years of boyhood, the future founder
of the United States Post Office had heard in his father's house much dis-
cussion of the British colonial postal system. While in Providence he was
himself for a short time deputy postmaster of that place, and during his
youth and early manhood his constant employment in and management of
newspaper offices had kept him in intimate association with a system for
which he seems to have acquired nothing but contempt and aversion.¹ His
former associates, James Parker and John Holt, had been postmasters at
New Haven, and John Holt became in later years a virile critic of the colo-
nial post.² The delivery of newspapers to their rural subscribers seems to

¹ There was in colonial days, as there is now, a close connection between the post office and the publisher. This
condition is interestingly set forth in Mr. Paltsits's article on John Holt referred to earlier in this chapter; in
American Archives, 4th series, 2: 537, and in "Letters from James Parker to Benjamin Franklin" in Proceedings
of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2d series, 16: 186-232, May 1902.

² See Mr. Paltsits's article before referred to. See also American Archives, 4th Series, 2: 537.

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