Welcome to Things Worth Remembering, our weekly column in which writers share a poem or paragraph that all of us should commit to heart. This week, in an excerpt from her new book, We the Women, Norah O’Donnell recalls the story of the Goddard Broadside, the only version of the Declaration of Independence inscribed with the name of a woman: Mary Katharine Goddard.
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On January 18, 1777, the Second Continental Congress ordered the printing of an authentic copy of the Declaration of Independence, with the names of the signers, so that each of the states could put the founding document into its archives. It was the first time that the country would learn the names of almost every signer of the Declaration. America was at war, and they needed to know the men leading the charge.
The lawmakers were meeting in Baltimore because British troops were in New Jersey, and getting close to Philadelphia, “the seat of war” and the nation’s then-capital. Baltimore was the home of Mary Katharine Goddard, the first female postmaster in the United States. The printing shop she had inherited from her family was just a few blocks away from the new Congress. Since the move south, Mary Katharine had printed a number of resolutions and notices for Congress, so when it was time to quickly print the country’s most important document, they called on her.
In just two weeks, she gathered the names and printed copies, and sent them to the 13 colonies. Earlier versions of the Declaration had circulated without all the signatories’ names to avoid British detection. Printing the version with nearly all the signers’ names was an act of defiance and extraordinary bravery.
