Although Americans celebrate its approval every year on July 4, the Declaration of Independence was not officially signed until August 2, 1776. Fifty-six names follow the text, most famously that of John Hancock, chairman of the Second Continental Congress. This was a radical act. Each delegate in effect signed his own arrest warrant as a traitor to the British Crown.
A Revolutionary Woman
A trivia question for American Revolutionary history is what one woman’s name appears on the Declaration of Independence? This name was not among those original signatories, but in 1777 Baltimore printer Mary Katherine Goddard (1738–1816) was commissioned to typeset and print the first copy of the Declaration to include the names of its signatories. At the bottom of the printed page, she proudly added “Printed by Mary Katherine Goddard.” Goddard more typically printed her name on masthead as “M.K. Goddard,” obscuring her sex by using only her initials.
Pressing Truths by composer Michelle Isaac tells Goddard’s story and helps recover a forgotten figure of the American Revolution. Goddard, as editor of the Maryland Journal newspaper in Baltimore from 1774–1784, reported on the Revolution’s early battles and raised her own voice in editorials calling for American independence from Britain.
In 1775, she became postmaster of Baltimore, likely making her the first woman to hold such a post in the colonies, and thus when the British threatened to attack Philadelphia in December 1776 and the Continental Congress relocated to Baltimore, Goddard became responsible for handing all official mail to and from the delegates.
Victory Leads to Opportunity
In December of 1776, the momentum of the Revolution shifted. Following a string of defeats, George Washington led the Continental Army to a pivotal victory at Trenton, famously crossing the icy Delaware River to rout the British garrison in a surprise attack. Hoping to capitalize on the new momentum and to remind Americans of what they were fighting for, Congress commissioned Goddard to print a new copy of the Declaration and reveal the names of its signatories. To the names on that printing, Goddard added her own.
Yet after printing that “all men are created equal,” Goddard would experience the limits of that vocabulary. In 1789, after the Revolution had been won and the U.S. Constitution approved, Goddard’s position as Postmaster in a growing port city and the young nation’s fifth largest city was both financially lucrative and a federal post. This made Goddard in all likelihood the nation’s first female employee, yet it also exposed her to political malfeasance. Goddard was soon fired, becoming one of the nation’s first victims of political patronage. The reason for her dismissal was “for want of a man,” Newly appointed Postmaster General Samuel Osgood claimed that the job now required “more traveling… than a woman could undertake.” Goddard and 230 Baltimore signatories petitioned George Washington to reinstate her to no avail.
The Music
Isaac’s orchestral drama opens with the sound of mechanistic repetition, evoking the sounds of Goddard’s printing press. A descending slide in the lower strings will become emotionally emblematic of Goddard’s crisis as the work continues.
The text opens with the Declaration’s opening sentence and continues with words from Goddard’s own revolutionary commentaries and accounts, beginning with the opening shots of the battles in 1775 at Lexington and Concord. Goddard calls upon the industry and economy of “my dear country women” to defend the new nation’s liberties. Revolutionary fife tunes echo.
The work’s main melodic motto—a rising, aspirational line accompanying the new nation’s statement of ideals—accompanies the words “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Yet as the soprano repeats “that all men are created equal,” Goddard’s realization that “all” might not include her becomes bitterly clear in the descending bend of its sounding pitch. Her anger rises as expressed in the spinning turbulence and punctuation of the orchestral strings and then brass. The text is from the unsuccessful petition for her reinstatement.
Isaac then imagines Goddard’s shock and despair at her lost position and silenced voice, yet an epilogue offers a vision of her determination and continuing dedication to the nation’s ideals. Goddard worked until the end of her life as an independent business woman, operating a book and dry good store.
Sources
Meredith Herndon, “Every American Knows the Declaration of Independence. Almost Nobody Knows the Woman Who Printed It,” Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, July 17, 2026.
Erick Trickey, “Mary Katherine Goddard, the Woman whose Name Appears on the Declaration of Independence,” Smithsonian Magazine, Nov. 14, 2018.
“Women in the U.S. Postal System: Mary Katherine Goddard,” Smithsonian National Postal Museum.