the questions of American freedom

Mary Katherine Goddard, Sarah Updike Goddard & Belinda Starling

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Zoom in and you’ll see it: Mary Katherine’s name, printed right at the bottom (image via Wikimedia Commons)

In January 1777, Mary Katherine Goddard printed the second-ever edition of the Declaration of Independence, the first to include the signatures of the 56 delegates of the Continental Congress.

At the very bottom of the document, she included her own name: “Baltimore, in Maryland: printed by Mary Katherine Goddard.”