![Historic print of the Goddard Broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence with various signatures at the bottom of the page; item includes typed font and all names of the signers; at the bottom it says "Printed by Mary Katherine Goddard"](/sites-drupal/default/files/styles/max_scale_640x640/public/field_ers_item_record_image/2021-09/PROG05.png?itok=cXYAMDqc)
Mary Katherine Goddard (1738–1816), printer
Broadside of the Declaration of Independence
Baltimore, in Maryland: Printed by Mary Katharine Goddard, 1777
Rare Book Division
Broadside of the Declaration of Independence
The second official printing of the Declaration of Independence appeared on January 18, 1777, by order of the Continental Congress, which had recently evacuated to Baltimore to escape the British Army. Mary Katherine Goddard, a prominent printer and bookseller and Baltimore’s first postmaster, undertook the printing. In publishing and appending her name to the Declaration, Goddard openly aligned herself with the cause of the newly formed United States and invited the same risks to her life and property as those faced by members of Congress. Today the “Goddard Broadside” is notable not only as the first edition of the Declaration of Independence to be printed by a woman, but also as the first to publicly announce the names of nearly all of the document’s signatories.
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Items in Beginnings
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Thomas Jefferson’s handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence
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The “Goddard Broadside” printing of the Declaration of Independence
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Broadside of the Declaration of Independence
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The Goddard Broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence
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First printing of the Constitution of the United States
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Anti-tobacco treatise by King James I
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