Which woman’s name appears on the Declaration of Independence?

WASHINGTON ( DC News Now ) — The names of 56 men ended up on the Declaration of Independence in the form of their signatures.

The name of one woman appeared on it, too, well, a version of it.

According to the National Park Service (NPS), that woman was Mary Katharine Goddard.

Goddard wasn’t a signer. She was a printer to the Continental Congress. The copy she printed in January 1777 was the first version of the Declaration of Independence to list the names of most of the signers.

“Goddard risked her life and her livelihood by including her own name on the Declaration of Independence,” states the National Park Service’s website , indicative of the times in which Goddard lived.

Goddard was born in New London, Conn. in 1739. She learned the printing business from her younger brother. William. Goddard hime to Providence, R.I., then to Philadelphia. William started the Pennsylvania Chronicle . The Goddards moved to Baltimore, Md. where William started the Maryland Journal and the Baltimore Advertiser .

About a year after that, Goddard took over the printing business. She became the first postmaster of Baltimore in 1775, the first female postmaster in the colonies, then, the first female postmaster in the United States. She stopped printing the Maryland Journal under her brother’s name and started printing it under “M.K. Goddard.”

The Continental Congress relocated to Baltimore in December 1776, close to Goddard’s printing office/bookstore/post office. She printed Congressional resolutions and notices as well as the Declaration of Independence with the names of the signers. Goddard’s imprint at the bottom of the Declaration identifies the city and her full name: “Baltimore, in Maryland: Printed by Mary Katharine Goddard.”

Goddard died in 1816.

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