Everyone knows about John Hancock’s famous signature on the Declaration of Independence.
But there’s another name on that historic document most Americans have never heard of.
And the incredible patriot who signed the Declaration of Independence has one of the most remarkable stories in American history.
The woman who signed the Declaration of Independence
When George Washington’s Continental Army was getting chased out of New Jersey in December 1776, Congress panicked and fled Philadelphia with the Declaration of Independence stuffed in a wagon.
But after Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas Day and crushed the British at Trenton and Princeton, Congress got their courage back.
They decided to print the Declaration again – this time with all their names on it for the first time.
The person they turned to for this historic job wasn’t one of the famous Founding Fathers.
It was Mary Katharine Goddard, a Baltimore newspaper publisher who’d been fighting for American freedom since the very beginning.
At the bottom of that January 1777 broadside, she proudly signed: "Baltimore, in Maryland: Printed by Mary Katharine Goddard."¹
She was fighting the British before it was cool
While other publishers were playing it safe, Goddard was already taking on the British Empire.
For three years, she’d been using her Maryland Journal to blast British brutality and spread the revolutionary message that was setting America on fire.
She reprinted Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and published extra editions about the Battle of Bunker Hill.
"The ever memorable 19th of April gave a conclusive answer to the questions of American freedom," Goddard wrote after Lexington and Concord. "That day . . . evidenced that Americans would rather die than live slaves!"¹
This wasn’t some fair-weather patriot jumping on the bandwagon.
Goddard was all-in from the beginning.
The family business that built America’s communications
Born in 1738 into a Connecticut family of printers and postmasters, Goddard learned the newspaper business from the ground up.
Her father Giles was a postmaster, but when he got too sick to work, the family had to scramble.
Her mother Sarah sent young William Goddard to apprentice as a printer, and seven years later the family moved to Providence where Sarah financed Rhode Island’s first newspaper.¹
But here’s where it gets interesting.
William was brilliant but completely unreliable – the kind of guy who’d start a business and then disappear, leaving someone else to clean up the mess.
"She was dependable and he brilliantly erratic," one biographer wrote about Mary Katharine and her brother.¹
While William was doing time in debtor’s prison in 1771 and 1775, Mary Katharine kept his businesses running.
Congress knew who to call when it mattered
By 1774, William had handed control of the Maryland Journal over to his sister so he could focus on building a private postal service free of British control.
That postal service would eventually become the U.S. Post Office.
And when Congress adopted William’s postal system in July 1775, they made Mary Katharine the postmaster of Baltimore that October.
She was likely the United States government’s first employee when the nation was born.¹
When Congress needed someone reliable to print the Declaration of Independence, they didn’t mess around.
They went straight to the person who’d been getting the job done while everyone else was making excuses.
The war years tested her resolve
Running a newspaper and post office during the Revolution wasn’t exactly a get-rich-quick scheme.
Congress was always broke and often failed to pay her, so Goddard paid the post riders out of her own pocket.
Paper shortages forced her to publish irregularly in 1776.
By 1778, she was so desperate she announced she’d accept payment in beeswax, flour, lard, butter, beef, or pork instead of cash.¹
But somehow, she kept going when lesser people would’ve quit.
In November 1779, she could boast that the Maryland Journal had as extensive a circulation as any newspaper in the United States.¹
Her own brother betrayed her
After everything Mary Katharine had done to keep the family business alive, her brother William pulled a shocking betrayal.
In January 1784, he forced his sister out of the business and took her position as publisher of the Maryland Journal for himself.¹
The siblings started publishing competing almanacs, and William included a vicious attack calling his sister "a hypocritical character" and insulting her "double-faced Almanack."¹
There’s no evidence the brother and sister ever spoke again.
When William got married in Rhode Island in 1786, Mary Katharine didn’t attend.
The government she served abandoned her
But an even bigger betrayal was coming.
In October 1789, the newly appointed postmaster general Samuel Osgood replaced Goddard with John White of Annapolis.
The reason they gave? Complete nonsense.
John Burrell, Osgood’s assistant, said supervision of nearby post offices was being added to the job, and "more travelling might be necessary than a woman could undertake."¹
This was after fourteen years of faithful service during the worst of times – service that had included plenty of travel and responsibility.
Two hundred prominent Baltimore residents signed a letter demanding Goddard’s reinstatement.
Even George Washington wouldn’t help
Goddard herself appealed directly to President George Washington and the U.S. Senate for her job back.
"She hath been discharged without the smallest imputation of any Fault," Goddard wrote to the Senate in January 1790. "These are but poor rewards indeed for fourteen Years faithful Service, performed in the worst of times."¹
She called her postmaster position her "little Office," which was "established by her own Industry in the best years of her life, & whereon depended all her future Prospects of subsistence."¹
Washington refused to intervene.
The Senate never even bothered to answer her letter.
The patriot who helped birth America deserved better
Mary Katharine Goddard spent the next 20 years running a bookstore in Baltimore and selling dry goods.
She never married and died in Baltimore on August 12, 1816, at age 78.
She left her property to her servant, Belinda Starling, "to recompense the faithful performance of duties to me."¹
This was a patriot who printed the Declaration of Independence, ran one of America’s most important newspapers during the Revolution, and served as one of the nation’s first government employees.
Her name appears on the same document as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin, but most Americans have never heard of her.
Mary Katharine Goddard deserves to be remembered alongside the Founding Fathers as one of the unsung heroes who made American independence possible.
¹ Trickey, Erick. "Mary Katharine Goddard, the Woman Whose Name Appears on the Declaration of Independence." Smithsonian Magazine, November 14, 2018.