Mary Katherine Goddard Spread the Spirit of Independence

[From guest contributor Carol]

Mary Katherine Goddard, a newspaper publisher and the postmaster of Baltimore, Maryland, is famous for printing the first copy of the Declaration of Independence that included all the signers’ names.

Born in 1738, Mary Katherine learned the family business at her mother’s side in their Providence print shop. She trained as a typesetter, printer, and journalist, before moving to Philadelphia to run her brother’s printing business.

In 1774, after closing the Philadelphia shop, Mary Katherine joined her brother William in Baltimore where he had opened a new printing concern and founded Baltimore’s first newspaper, the Maryland Journal. Although it was owned by William, Mary Katherine actually ran the business just as she had in Philadelphia. A year later she officially assumed the title that reflected her work as publisher of the newspaper—the colophon on the May 10, 1775 issue read “Published by M. K. Goddard.”

The same year brought Mary Katherine a second important title when she became the postmaster of Baltimore, most likely the first woman to hold such a post in colonial America.

Mary Katherine was the first printer to publish a copy of the Declaration of Independence that included the names of the signers. Copies of the document had circulated for six months without the signatures—the men who signed the document were considered traitors by the colonial authorities—until in January 1777 the Continental Congress authorized the Maryland Journal to publish the Declaration with its signers’ names.

Newspapers were vital to the spread of the new revolutionary ideas, but many publishers faced trouble during the war. Mary Katherine maintained the Maryland Journal through the turmoil of the Revolution and never missed an edition despite the uncertain times. She also kept the mail moving, even on occasion paying the post riders from her own pocket.

In 1784, Mary Katherine’s name disappeared from the newspaper’s masthead. And, after fourteen years in office as postmaster, she was relieved of her job on the grounds that it required extensive travel that the authorities believed women could not handle. Over 200 business owners in the city signed a petition to Postmaster General Samuel Osgood stating that Mary Katherine had provided “universal satisfaction to the community” and that they were “praying in the most earnest manner that she be restored.” But she was not reinstated despite the the best efforts of the city’s businessmen.

Mary Katherine—a pioneer in both publishing and postal service—ran a successful bookstore in Baltimore until her death in 1816.

Martha Gellhorn: Fearless Journalist

Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998) spent her professional life covering major conflicts, including the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War. Fearless and prolific, she blazed a trail for future female journalists. Gellhorn was one of five individuals―and the only woman―honored on the 2008 American Journalists stamps.

I recently caught up with author Caroline Moorehead, who wrote Martha Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life, an extensive biography of the influential journalist. Via email, Moorehead answered a few of our questions about Gellhorn.

Why do you think Martha Gellhorn was such an influential journalist?

I think she was one of the very first war correspondents to look at war from the point of view of the civilians. That’s what interested her: what happens to ordinary people when war is all around you. Something of her muted and eloquent outrage, barely kept in check, was very powerful. Younger journalists read and copied.

When she started out, were female war correspondents rare?

Yes, pretty rare. No tradition for them to go anywhere near the front line for a start. [There was a] feeling that somehow [it was] not right or decorous to have them around. But there were a few in Spain, and by the end of World War II, numbers were growing.

And did she face discrimination from her fellow journalists and also the subjects she covered?

The military were constantly angry with her for venturing to places she should not have gone to; fellow journalists tended to find her daunting and very glamorous; she was very forthright and bold and energetic, and people seem to have admired her.

Gellhorn traveled to war zones well into old age. What do you think kept her going?

No adrenaline like it; also, the license to see, to ask questions, to witness, to convey what she saw, was irresistible. That was what she did. She wasn’t much interested in comfort or safety.

At the moment, are you working on anything?

I am writing a sequel to a book I had out in September called A Train in Winter, about a group of women from the French resistance. The new one is about a plateau in the Ardèche, where they set about saving people hunted by the Gestapo.

Civil Rights Journalist Ethel L. Payne Asked the Tough Questions

The journalism career of Ethel L. Payne (1911–1991) began rather unexpectedly while she was working at an Army Special Services club in Japan. She showed her journal to a visiting reporter from the Chicago Defender—an African-American paper with a national readership—and soon her observations about the experiences of African-American soldiers became the basis for front-page stories.

In the early 1950s, Payne moved back to her hometown of Chicago to work full-time for the Defender, and two years later she took over the paper’s one-person bureau in Washington, D.C. She covered key events in the civil rights movement and earned a reputation as an aggressive journalist willing to ask tough questions.