CHAPTER TWO

Mary Katherine Goddard, Printer During and After the
Revolution and Deputy Postmistress of Baltimore-Town

MARY KATHERINE GODDARD, four years older
than her brother, was born in 1736 at New London,
Connecticut. When her mother and brother moved to
Providence in 1762, she probably accompanied them
and there received her first training in printing. Wil-
liam Goddard's departure in 1765 left the two women
in charge of the printing office, under the name of
Sarah Goddard and Company. In 1768, John Carter purchased their
business in Providence and they removed to Philadelphia where they
joined William Goddard. On January 5, 1770, Mrs. Sarah Goddard
died, leaving brother and sister alone to face one of the most difficult
situations in their careers. In addition to helping her brother with the
press work, Mary Katherine Goddard apparently kept the accounts of
the printing business, and the likelihood is that she attended to most of
the business details.1 When he went to Baltimore to found the Maryland
Journal he probably left to his sister the disagreeable task of continuing
the newspaper in spite of the opposition of his former partners. In
February 1774, she was called to Baltimore to take over the paper
there while her brother organized the Constitutional Post Office. From
1775 to 1784, a period of great anxiety and difficulty in the history of
American journalism, she printed the paper without a break and at a
standard of excellence that rivaled the leading newspapers of the day.
The significance of this achievement is better realized when it is recalled
that it was the only newspaper printed in Baltimore from July 5, 1779
to May 16, 1783. With pardonable pride she boasted in the Maryland
Journal on November 16, 1779, that her paper circulated as extensively
as any in the United States.2

1 A receipt signed by her on February 2, 1771, for the annual subscription to the Pennsylvania Chronicle is in the Norris
Family Accounts, I, 80 at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

2 The news printed in her paper and in that of her Baltimore competitor, James Hayes, Junior, did not at all times
maintain a high standard of accuracy. Thomas Jefferson, writing to Governor Benjamin Harrison of Virginia to inform