0:00 On January eighteenth, 1777, a woman named Mary Katharine Goddard printed the first official version of the Declaration of Independence that actually included the names of the signers.0:12 Right.0:13 Not July fourth, 1776.0:14 It took months.0:15 And that detail, that name—Mary Katharine Goddard—is exactly why we do this show.0:21 It reminds me of what we talked about last week with Hussein Abdel-Rasoul at King Tut’s tomb.0:28 The person who enables the entire historical moment, but gets forgotten.0:33 Completely.0:34 Because everyone thinks of the Declaration as this one, single event.0:38 But getting it from a secret parchment in a closed room to a public proclamation… that was a whole separate battle.0:47 So why did it take so long to get the names out there?0:50 Well, because signing that document was an act of treason.0:54 Publicly attaching your name to it was basically signing your own death warrant if the revolution failed.1:02 The first prints, the Dunlap Broadsides, were anonymous for a reason.1:07 Okay, so who was Mary Katharine Goddard that the Continental Congress trusted her with this… this incredibly dangerous list of names?1:16 She was a force.1:17 She was the printer for the Congress, but also Baltimore's postmaster.1:22 And this was all happening because the British were threatening Philadelphia, so the entire Congress had picked up and moved to Baltimore in December 1776.1:33 Ah, so they were refugees, essentially.1:36 And they needed a printer in their new city.1:39 Exactly.1:39 And they needed a propaganda win.1:42 They’d just had a victory at Trenton, and this was the moment to rally support, to show the world—and the colonies—who was ALL in.1:51 So they commissioned Goddard to print an official copy, this time with the names.1:57 And what she printed was different.1:59 Totally different.2:00 It had this decorative border, two columns of text… and fifty-five of the fifty-six signers’ names printed for all to see.2:09 One guy, Thomas McKean, probably signed after it went to press.2:13 But here’s the thing that gets me.2:16 At the bottom of this document, full of names like John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson… she puts her own name.2:23 “Printed by Mary Katharine Goddard.” Yes.2:26 And that is the whole story.2:28 She wasn't just a hired hand.2:30 By putting her full name on it, she was openly aligning herself with the revolution.2:36 She was taking the exact same risk as the men who signed it.2:40 Wow.2:41 So if things went south, that document was evidence against her, too.2:45 Absolutely.2:46 It was a profound act of courage that’s just… been completely overshadowed.2:52 So, she’s this patriot, an official printer for the government, the postmaster for a major city during a war.2:59 She must have been celebrated afterward.3:02 You would think.3:03 But in 1789, she was removed from her postmaster position.3:07 What?3:08 Why?3:08 The Postmaster General, a man named Samuel Osgood, claimed the job now required travel that, and I'm quoting here, "a woman could not undertake." Hold on.3:19 A woman who had been running communications and printing treasonous documents through the entire Revolutionary War… suddenly couldn't handle the job in peacetime?3:30 Right.3:31 It makes no sense.3:32 Over two hundred prominent citizens of Baltimore signed a petition protesting it.3:37 She even petitioned President George Washington directly.3:42 And?3:42 The dismissal stood.3:43 It was almost certainly a political move, not a practical one.3:48 The job was given to a man.3:49 So this woman whose name is literally on the Declaration of Independence—the only woman whose name is on any copy—gets pushed out of her government role because of her gender.4:02 That's the pattern, isn't it?4:04 After her dismissal, she ran a bookstore for a couple of decades, and then her story just… fades out.4:11 We know so little about her later life.4:14 It's incredible.4:15 She risked her life to publish the names of the founders, and in the end, her own story was nearly erased.4:22 It’s like she printed her own name on that broadside, trying to make sure she wouldn't be forgotten.4:29 I think that's exactly what she was doing.4:32 Securing her place in the story.4:35 And it's just sitting there, in collections like the New York Public Library, waiting for us to read it.4:42 It makes you wonder how many other names are hiding in plain sight on the documents we think we know so well.
