PreserveCast: In 1818, 42 years after the shot heard around the world cracked across the Massachusetts field, John Adams was asked to reflect on the meaning and impact of the American Revolution. In this brief letter, Adams explained that the American Revolution was not a common event. Its effects and consequences have already been over a great part of the globe. And when and where are they to cease? But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. Revolutionary thought and thinking did not end with the Treaty of Paris, nor did it begin at Lexington and Concord. In this special podcast series, we'll explore the revolutionary ideas that were catalyzed and accelerated by the self-evident idea that all men are created equal in what bold and new thinking that declaration is forged. Revolution at 250 is a special production of PreserveCast in partnership with Preservation Maryland and the Maryland Center for History and Culture. Our hosts are Katie Calgene, president and CEO of the Maryland Center for History and Culture. and Nicholas Redding, host of PreserveCast and president and CEO of Preservation Maryland. Welcome to Revolution at 250, the podcast exploring bold ideas, trailblazing figures, and transformative moments that challenge the status quo. 250 years of revolutionary thinking and beyond. I'm Katie Calgene here with co-host Nick Redding. Today, we're diving into the life of Mary Catherine Goddard, a pioneering printer, publisher, and revolutionary figure whose influence spanned both media and government. Goddard not only was one of the first women in American history to run a newspaper, but she was also appointed postmaster in Baltimore in 1775. To help us explore Goddard's extraordinary contributions, we're here joined today by Dr. Christy Pachoff, assistant professor at Boston College. She specializes in 19th century literature, book history, and digital humanities with research focusing on how systems of circulation, like the US Postal Service, have shaped what kinds of literature and ideas could emerge and spread. Her work on digital humanities projects mapped the first century of the postal system, how networks of communication transformed culture, politics, and public life. Today, Christy will help us to understand how Mary Catherine Goddard's groundbreaking work in printing and the postal system made her a true revolutionary in ideas and action. Thank you so much for joining us today, Christy. Maybe we could start off by talking a little bit about your background and some of your research interests or maybe some of the recent projects that you've been taking on. Sure. First of all, thank you so much for having me, Katie and Nick. ⁓ I'm very thrilled to be talking about Baltimore's Mary Catherine Goddard, a truly important figure in the early American postal system who shows up in the first chapter of my book. As Katie mentioned, I'm an assistant professor of early American literature at Boston College. And my work really sits at the intersection of literary studies, histories of material culture and things, and the history of infrastructure. So I'm especially interested in the ways that systems of circulation and communication, like the postal system, the printing press, transportation networks, really shape who gets to participate in public life and who's excluded. So the current book project looks at the early US postal system. not just as a neutral conduit for democracy or ⁓ as kind seamless communication system, but a powerful institution that really decided whose ideas, whose labor ⁓ moved freely through the country and whose didn't. ⁓ Mary Catherine Goddard, who sits in the first chapter of that book, is the opening figure in that story because she really shows how the revolutionary possibilities of communication, the very network that helped facilitate the American Revolution, that coordinated kind of act of collectivity ⁓ really ⁓ had its limits in the early national period. So we moved from this revolutionary communication system ⁓ towards ⁓ a different kind of infrastructure over the course of Mary Catherine Goddard's career. So my book really looks at the postal system has an infrastructure that shapes belonging in the United States. ⁓ And ⁓ the title of the project is called Postal Hackers. So I'm really interested in the ways that people who were excluded from the system, kind of pushed to the margins, were able to still find ways to access the postal system and use these everyday tools to build collectivities, to make their voices heard, or to travel or communicate freely in the Kristy, it's pleasure to have the chance to talk to you. ⁓ I'm a postal service nerd. And so the idea of this is so interesting because, you know, not only today is it an important part of our lives, but in early America, like even if the casual observer of early America just runs across all these references, you you're made the postmaster or you're given the ability to open the post office. And so your location becomes something very important and very special. There's just so many ways in which it ⁓ pops up everywhere in sort of early American Republic life. ⁓ And so I'm curious why in the context of that, with such an expansive story to tell, Mary Catherine Goddard is somebody who gets space in a book that has such a big story to tell. What's so important about her? Why should anyone listening ⁓ be concerned about her story and be interested in the story that she has to tell us? Oh, absolutely. So first, I'm glad you're a postal nerd. We're everywhere. I think the history of the Postal Service is so fascinating. It's something that touched on both enormous events in revolutionary era history. I know we're going to talk about the Declaration of Independence later, but also just the most mundane aspects of everyday life, where you would get food, when you knew the ships were coming in. The post office really kind of cut through people's daily lives in such a profound way. So in that way, it really does become a measure for communication, for public life, and who has access to those things. So I think Goddard falls at the beginning of this story because the project is less interested in the revolutionary moment and is more interested in the US post office department. So the system that was actually instituted and implemented in about 1790. So this was kind of after the revolution. And one of the first ⁓ acts that the first postmaster general did in setting up that ⁓ US post office department was terminate Mary Catherine Goddard. ⁓ After a long almost 20 year career serving Baltimore's communication needs. ⁓ She was an acclaimed public servant who was beloved by her community. And yet she was dismissed kind of just as the first act of this US Post Office Department. So for me, her dismissal, I think teaches us about what that new system was designed to do. one of the things, so it's in part about her termination and the end of her postal career, but it's also about the ways that she used her insider knowledge, that almost 20 years of postal work. to contest and counter her dismissal and to try to really actually let the people of Baltimore choose who their public officials would be. So she ends up going on a years long campaign to try to get her job back at first and then later get compensated for years of unpaid labor that she performed during the American Revolution. Ultimately she's unsuccessful, but her years long campaign and her documentation of it, really, I think, teaches us a great deal about how to contest state authority that is kind of proceeding outside of the democratic open sphere. So these decisions that happen behind closed doors that affect places like Baltimore very profoundly, but the citizens don't necessarily have any measure for contesting it. So Mary Catherine Goddard's dismissal and her campaign to get her job back. really becomes a measure for democracy in the early United States. Who gets to choose which public officials and the post office actually become, which might be overlooked in daily life actually really becomes this place of contest for ⁓ kind of public participation and democracy. So crucial story overlooked and worth exploring. mean, I know Katie's going to get into this and some of the line of questioning that we have and Katie's Institution is very familiar with Mary Catherine because of some material that they hold of hers, which I'll let Katie tell that story. I won't steal that since it's something that she cares for. obviously the focus of this, the way we're trying to talk about revolutionary ideas in a different way on this podcast is this idea that the revolution continued to inspire people, that the Revolutionary War may have ended in the 1780s, but the But the question is, did the revolution live on and did Americans of all different stripes and backgrounds ⁓ display revolutionary ideas throughout their lifetimes? ⁓ You know, those who lived through the revolution and those who were born many years or generations after. And Goddard, you know, stands out because obviously there's a little story to do with the Declaration of Independence of Mary Catherine. But, you know, it's almost you could argue, and I'm curious what you think. Is she revolutionary in different ways? Does she ⁓ sort of espouse these ideas of the revolution? Is she a revolutionary figure? And do you think, or were you able to identify whether or not she was inspired by those words that she helped to print? mean, is she a byproduct of the revolution, or is it just happenstance that she's trying to get her job back? Which way do you look at that kind of aspect of her life? ⁓ absolutely. I mean, I think Mary Catherine Goddard was absolutely essential to the American Revolution and to the early formation of the United States. ⁓ Her work as a printer in Baltimore, I think, helped ⁓ kind of build public energy kind of towards the revolution on the local level. And ⁓ as the administrator and bookkeeper who was meticulous in kind of organizing and sending mail off to its different destinations. She kept Baltimore connected to these other far flung places. So that kind of work, I think, really put her at an absolutely integral position in the nerve center of Baltimore's revolutionary kind of energy. but I think at the same time, we also see her as making distinctive contributions that I think have not fully been appreciated even yet 250 years later. Because when I had the great pleasure of ⁓ doing research at the Maryland Center for History and Culture, I was able to read many of the texts that Goddard printed. And we will talk about the Declaration of Independence, absolutely. But I was really struck by just how far ranging her publications are. ⁓ She printed a book, An Economic Triadist, on how to ⁓ adjust for the cost of inflation. So she was kind of producing economic triadises about US currency at a time when those questions were enormously pressing. So she was contributing to those ideas, printing and engaging with those conversations. She also prints a catechism in Maryland, which I think is really important on the local level. ⁓ She wasn't herself Catholic, but we do see her. printing church materials even beyond ⁓ her own religious community. We see her printing news from the war front in the battles in the West Indies that are coming to us, printed from Mary Catherine Goddard. So her print output is so far ranging that I think it has a capacity to really expand our understanding of what the concerns of the Revolutionary era were. They were economic. They were about how distant places were connected to one another. And Mary Catherine Goddard knew how to navigate that space so well. And she left behind a paper trail that is very thick. So the Maryland Center for History and Culture has really a treasure trove of materials that kind of show us how she was revolutionary and pushing the conversation forward in a lot of different ways. you think that Baltimore as a backdrop contributed to her the proliferation of materials that she was able to produce. Thinking about both her as a printer and as a postmaster, those are two different sets of information. But what role, like the backdrop of being in this city and all of these different ideas coming together helped to make her ⁓ volume so large, right? Like, it's just like, has to be a lot of ideas flowing through this space. Yes. And I think You know, the place and the person were an integral match here. And Mary Catherine Goddard didn't always live in Baltimore. She was from Connecticut, actually grew up in New England in a printing and postal family, in fact. both her mother and father worked for the postal system, the colonial era postal system. And her mother later, ⁓ after her father's death, embarked on a printing career herself. So Sarah Goddard actually learned the printing trade alongside her daughter Mary Catherine, as well as her younger son William, who is also a crucial figure in Maryland history and the history of New England as well. So ⁓ this whole unit, so Sarah Goddard and her two children, Mary Catherine and ⁓ William, ⁓ printed starting in Connecticut. They printed briefly in Rhode Island. ⁓ and then again in Philadelphia before ultimately moving to Baltimore. And in a lot of ways, they were kind of the quintessential American printers of the American Revolution. There's a great book by Joseph Edelman that is called Revolutionary Networks that talks about how many printers in this era were mobile and would move to cities and kind of meet this communications need. So the Goddards actually ended up in Baltimore at a time where there were just very few printers there. There wasn't a newspaper actually, even at that time. So William, ⁓ moving ahead of his mother and sister who he left behind in Philadelphia to run a print shop that he had set up there, set up another ⁓ in Baltimore. And then ⁓ after ⁓ Sarah Goddard's death, Mary Catherine ended up ⁓ arriving in Baltimore with William. running the newspaper ⁓ after he went off to embark on another career, which was kind of a pattern in their relationship. William would kind of move ahead, open a newspaper and print shop. Mary Catherine would show up and do the work ⁓ and kind of spend years kind of ⁓ living up to the promises that William made in his promotional material. So they actually had a very generative relationship for quite a long time, actually until things changed in Baltimore. ⁓ Actually, ⁓ after the American Revolution, William Goddard was expecting a better position in the US government. ⁓ think he wanted to be the postmaster general. He wanted to be. He had his eyes on a higher position than he was able to get. So he ultimately ⁓ cut his ties with the government and then decided to ⁓ run the Baltimore newspaper in full force and ousted Mary Catt. from the imprint, even though she'd been printing the newspaper in his absence for over a decade at that point. ⁓ Baltimore was absolutely essential. ⁓ Her relationship with her family and their position in Baltimore as this singular printing family, but quintessential printing family, ⁓ really ⁓ set them up to be the head of the nerve center at the postal system. ⁓ So I think place really mattered a great deal. That's a, mean, obviously you have a mastery of her story, which is so fun to sit down and talk to somebody who really knows her beyond just sort of the footnotes that you see elsewhere. ⁓ So I really appreciate you spending time with us to have that conversation. ⁓ I guess that your explanation there sort of triggers two questions. One, how common was this kind of arrangement that you're describing? And then by extension, obviously, we've kind of dropped some hints to her printing the Declaration of Independence. Maybe you can give us a sense for what that story means and how either ⁓ unusual or usual it was that she would be the person ⁓ given the ability to be involved in that story in the way that she was. So how common of an arrangement is this, particularly for a woman of her era? And then how does that feed into her being in the central part of the story of the Declaration? Yeah. And why in Baltimore? So 1777 in Baltimore, the bottom of her broadside is she prints MK Goddard, Baltimore, 1777. So what constellation of opportunity was created for her to be able to do that? So great questions. I think the first, the shortest answer, I mean, she was exceedingly rare ⁓ as a printer, especially ⁓ as a woman. There were other women printers in the 18th century, including her own mother, including Ann Timothy of South Carolina and ⁓ Ann Franklin in New England. So there were other women who took over print shops, but a great majority of them were widows of career long printers who took over print shops. their husbands died. Mary Catherine Goddard never married, so her connection to printing was through her mother and through her brother, which already kind of sets her positionality apart. It meant different things for her. We had this kind of crisis between siblings that ultimately led to them not speaking to one another anymore. in a lot of ways, Her printing career was absolutely ⁓ exceptional. However, there were other women in the room, but they kind of got there in different ways. ⁓ And then the question about the declaration in Baltimore. I actually love this part of the story because ⁓ I think when I think about the American Revolution, I don't often think about ⁓ the low points ⁓ for the American side. ⁓ And I think that the printing actually only makes sense if we think about it as emerging out of that winter of 1777, ⁓ just after a major kind of turnaround in ⁓ the war. So really December 1776, the revolution was on the brink of disaster. George Washington ⁓ actually wrote in a letter, I have the note here, I tremble for Philadelphia as the British army loomed outside of the city. He was terrified. ⁓ He had a troop of soldiers whose indentures were ending ⁓ and a war that still needed to be fought. And Congress was sitting in Philadelphia as George Washington was nearby the Delaware River, trembling for them. So during this winter, ⁓ Congress actually relocated to Baltimore. So ⁓ by January 1777, about a month after ⁓ George Washington's let note, ⁓ expressing his fear, ⁓ the whole of Congress relocated to Baltimore. And then they hired Mary Catherine Goddard as the official printer of that session of Congress, because she was the best in town, because she did good work, ⁓ because she was close to the place where they were meeting. ⁓ So she printed not only the declaration that came out of that meeting, but she printed ⁓ missives about the colonial lottery. She printed advertisements, ⁓ broadsides that were sent to Philadelphia to promote civil disobedience and resistance to the troops that were moving through. So she was the printer for Congress. And then in January 1777, ⁓ after George Washington ⁓ did the iconic Delaware crossing that reversed the tide of the war at that moment. ⁓ Congress determined to celebrate the moment, to mark that present ⁓ victory that kind of felt ⁓ a little bit more secure by printing the first full issue of the Declaration of Independence, which Goddard herself had actually printed it before in newspapers. It had appeared in newspapers, the body text, but not with the full list of signatories, the people who are signing their names, their lives, and really ⁓ at great risk to themselves to kind of put their names there. So Goddard was hired to do this historic task. ⁓ She translated the declaration from what had been an anonymous, very bold public document into ⁓ this shared kind of record of political commitment that was both about commemorating a turning point in the war, but it was also about ⁓ us, about posterity and the people. ⁓ who would live in the wake of that moment. So ⁓ Goddard was actually also commissioned to send copies of the Declaration to every colony. And they were actually ⁓ ordered by Congress to put it in their archives, which I've done the accounting of that. didn't actually, not everybody followed directions, but it was, ⁓ her print was designed really to draw people together in this crucial turning point moment. And I think for me, nothing becomes more evident of ⁓ Benedict Anderson's idea of the imagined community that arises through print. He very much has this moment in mind, but Goddard's printing of the Declaration, I think, really did allow colonists to imagine themselves as part of something bigger. It was print in action, kind binding people together and making a statement ⁓ to the public and to the world. And it came out of Baltimore. It came out of a high point that came after a very low point. And I think that ⁓ it's an extraordinary document in that respect. And ⁓ one of the things that I love about it the most is that Goddard, she knew the stakes. She set the type. She knew the document backwards and forwards. And she decided to put her own name on the page. So we have the list of the signatories, the people in the room where it happened. And then Goddard affixes her full name. ⁓ Sometimes she would print MK Goddard, but on this one, she is Mary Catherine Goddard, ⁓ printer ⁓ in Baltimore, and adds her name to that list of people who are signing up for these ideas for democracy and ⁓ taking great risk, but for the game that we're all living in today. And I want to give Katie a chance to talk a little here. I'm just curious as a follow up to that. Did, in Baltimore, those who are familiar with her story today ⁓ see that as sort of an act of rebellion of her own, sort of a revolutionary act that a woman of that era would put her name on it. ⁓ Is that true? Do we know, was she not supposed to put her name on there? Is that a part of it? ⁓ Did they not anticipate that being there? I mean, I think it's so fascinating. that this document with all of the inconsistencies that are inherent in it and sort of, know, that obviously it's taken generations to perfect this idea that Jefferson and all of these people who come together come, you know, put pen to paper and then sort of bequeath something that future generations can improve upon ⁓ to create that more perfect union. We that document first public printing has a woman's name on it. There's something really impressive about that. Is it true that that was sort of a rebellious act on her part? Did they not anticipate seeing that on there or do we not really know? would say, ⁓ rather than rebellious, I think it was very bold. I think it was enormously bold for her to put her full name there, while in some ways entirely conventional, because almost anything, well, actually everything that she printed from Congress in this era contains her name, kind of in the same format. We have the footer, the line, and then her name is listed below in the colophon. But in this document, ⁓ it is one of the few where she actually uses her full name. ⁓ Many of those prints she puts M.K. Goddard and this one she opts for Mary Catherine, two girls names, ⁓ Goddard. And I think that that is enormously intentional. And I think that we see it in this document that she knew would have life beyond. It was designed for the moment and for posterity. But we also see it actually in another record. So this one's actually at the Rhode Island Historical Society. But they have Goddard's commission, so her original commission to the postal system that was signed ⁓ by Richard Bech, ⁓ a family member of Ben Franklin. ⁓ And one of the things that Goddard does to that document, so it's a standard blank form that, you know, it has the printed text that any postmaster in the system ⁓ would have, and then you fill in the person's name, you fill in the place in handwriting. So it's a typical blank form where some of the text is standardized and some of it is kind of filled in based on the person and the local circumstance. But Goddard's has other changes as well. So we have her postal commission that names her as the postmaster of Baltimore. But she struck through gender changes in that language. So it doesn't say she's the postmaster. She struck it out and said she's the postmistress of Baltimore. All of the gendered pronouns where it says the postmaster, he shall do this, she adds an S. So she revises those documents to reflect her gender really meticulously. And I think with an editorial like printer's eye, she uses, you know, kind of these, the shorthand that is just so visible to other printers. in other records where it was enormously clear that she wanted her gender to be recognized in her contribution on this document and I think elsewhere in her contributions to the US. And at the time, she was a well-known figure, right? She was somebody that in the community people would recognize a name that people, seeing this broadside, they know who she is, they know what her business is, they know what her role is in the the social economy, right? Like they know her, but why was she so lost in our present day understanding of this moment? Like she was such a prominent figure and so visible, but over time her story, it is not the thing you learn, at least not like Nick said earlier, she's a footnote. She's like, you know, like maybe if you like read down to the bottom line, but. She was a central character. Why do you think she was lost in our understanding? Yes. ⁓ And I think I would add to that, Katie, she was so well known in Baltimore. She was also super well known in Philly, where she had a printing career before that. And she was super well connected in ⁓ New England as well. So I think when most women ⁓ didn't have an expansive social network, we see her actually having an enormous reputation compared to many just people, let alone women in early America in this moment. So I do think it is a profound loss and silent thing that happened around her story. And I think that that happened really in some ways, kind of two factors. think the first really was her dismissal from the US postal system and what it required to diminish her authority to justify the dismissal and kind of how that termination really did kind of hinge on like pushing her out of this kind of public sphere in Baltimore that she really helped to cultivate and build. So I think first that dismissal that she was never really able to She was able to count her, but she wasn't able to regain her foothold. She wasn't able to kind of go back ⁓ to that kind of position that she held for so long. ⁓ So I think ⁓ that dismissal totally shaped her legacy. ⁓ And then I also think that there are ⁓ kind of remaining structural factors. are a couple of details that I can share that I think ⁓ kind of show how women's contributions just more broadly. ⁓ in the early national period ⁓ were diminished. And I think ⁓ in the book chapter, I talk a lot through ⁓ Rosemary Zegari's revolutionary backlash that really thinks about how ⁓ in this early national moment, opportunities that had been open for women ⁓ in the colonial era, in the revolutionary era were actually kind of closed off in this early national period. So the increasing democratization for white men ⁓ meant that there were fewer opportunities for like well-connected white women like Mary Catherine Goddard. So ⁓ I think two other factors that I think affected her legacy that are structural ⁓ and I think that have just been on my mind since being in Baltimore. And I think one, ⁓ I came across a record at the historical society that was just a very grandiose printed document, it was beautiful. ⁓ And it was a 50-year lease on a parcel of land from Governor John Howard. And ⁓ Goddard had signed a 50-year lease to build a mansion ⁓ in the middle of Baltimore. ⁓ it was, the lease stipulates kind of how large the house needs to be ⁓ and how many porches it needs to have. So we see her signing this lease. committing to building a foundation, committing to building, you know, kind of this house, this structure that I think had she finished it, it would have left behind something that we might've been able to remember by. But she loses her postal career in the middle of that home construction and she has to abandon the lease. She has to abandon the construction. She's financially ruined really from the loss of her career and the simultaneous kind of trying to build up of this structure. So we see that her ascending, you know, kind of in some respects when building up that house, but then it all kind of toppling over in the 1790s after she's dismissed from the post office. And then I think one other detail that I want to mention that I think I was So it actually made me really mad when I was in Baltimore, but for Mary Catherine Goddard, because I was really actually looking forward to visiting her burial site in Baltimore. So she is, and I think she rests, I think it's Old St. Paul's, which is close to the hospital, which is closed off. You can't enter the structure. There's a wall, but there's a sign on the wall. ⁓ that says some things. That I think knowing that Mary Catherine Goddard is buried inside of the cemetery, think just ⁓ it brought some anger. ⁓ she's buried in old St. Paul's Cemetery. You can't visit the headstone, but in its place there is ⁓ a grand plaque on the outside that says, among the illustrious men interned within this enclosure who assisted in the achievement of national independence in the Revolution and War of 1812 are the following. And then there's a list of like 12 dudes who did some things, ⁓ you know, kind of during ⁓ the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Big things. ⁓ But Goddard's name isn't on the list. And, you know, the only thing that's marking the lives that are ⁓ kind of commemorated there, that ended there, ⁓ is this sign that recognizes the contributions of the illustrious men. even though, you know, kind of got her, got her breast as well. And her contributions were just as integral, as actually brought together, you know, kind of the list of things who are commemorated on this plaque. So I think there's structural gendered reasons why, ⁓ we, don't know. But this to me is a real opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was, it's, it's sort of the perfect, like, entree here to kind of talk a little bit about our segue to talk about, you know, what could be done to tell her story. I was gonna ask that question and you sort of set us up perfectly for it. It strikes me that it's like you've got the Betsy Ross story that has a lot of holes in it and some questions around it. And then you have the Mary Catherine Goddard story, which is so real, so true and so exciting. And... There's so few people who do know about it. So it seems like it's a great opportunity to kind of tell that story. So obviously, you know, public commemoration and memorialization and interpretation is exciting. You know, why has it taken so long, though, for is it the same questions? mean, from a scholarly perspective, while her headstone might be walled off, the papers are there. They remain in all these different places. ⁓ She's arguably one of the first female government employees. What has taken so long from that perspective, or is it just sort of more of the same? And do you hope that by at least telling this part of the story, it presents opportunities for more physical commemorations, more preservation? I know we've lost her printing the site of her printing house, but that could be better marked. mean, there's other things that can be physically done. But sort of just you have to have the rigorous research behind it, ⁓ which I think, you your work opens up an opportunity for that. ⁓ But yeah, what more can be done to tell her story? What do you hope people know about her kind of moving forward? Yeah, no, thank you for this. And I think, so I mean, I think one of the things that is very clear from reading Goddard's papers is that she loved to print and she loved engaging with other people. So I think this is just a perfect time to truly like turn to the archive and let her paper trail kind of do some of the talking because I think that that hasn't really happened yet. I think that her ⁓ print output is often framed through her brother, ⁓ know, through his contributions and through his kind of values that we, I mean, we have more information from his life than we do hers. So I think that that, if we know about the Goddards, we know maybe more about William. So I think that that has in some, to some degree skewed some of what's available. But I also think that we live ⁓ in a world now where her records are available. And, ⁓ you know, I think that the declaration is you know, kind of worth studying in its printed form. But so are, you know, kind of some of her everyday prints that can really open up new windows into daily life in the, in the revolutionary era. And I have one, I have one here that I just have at my, at my house just printed because it just reminds me of how strange things were in the 18th century. And this is a 1780 print by Mary Catherine Goddard. And it was a broadside. So just to be hung up in public. And it says, robbery, $800 reward. So a small chest that was stolen in Baltimore in April in 1780. And then it has the list of all of the things that are included in that chest. And as a scholar of material culture, I just love these kinds of things. So it's a small pine chest, about two and a half feet long, 11 inches broad. And it includes $19,300. signed by the individuals who signed them, sundry papers, which are only of use to the owner, one pair of black velvet breeches, one half-worn shirt and stock, three books, Aesop's fables, a triad to sun bookkeeping, a complete French dictionary, a quantity of silver, six pounds of chocolate, one pound of pins, one pound of... ⁓ or no, one small green watch case. It goes on. Tom Thumb's Playbooks for Children, Jesuits bark in a paper, a few kegs of black silk. So it's just the list goes on and on. And this is kind of just a hours labor. And Mary Catherine Goddard's print shop is kind of printing something like that. I think the 250th is a perfect time to return to Mary Catherine Goddard. She has never gotten her due. So I think it's our responsibility, you know, to really, you know, kind of ⁓ work with what we have. And I think that what I've seen, you know, kind of in the archive is so robust. You know, we have things like this. ⁓ There's also an invitation. ⁓ One of the records that I like is an invitation to an eclipse party at the Goddard's house, ⁓ which also just is really fun to, you know, kind of think through. ⁓ that event as well. yeah, so think turning to the archive and ⁓ I think Goddard in a lot of respects actually guides us there because so I talked about her dismissal, I talked about her, ⁓ that adds kind of a major downfall in her public life. ⁓ But one of the things that she did kind of at the very end of this pursuit of getting her job back, ⁓ So she, ⁓ so the book chapter goes into great detail into all that she did. She wrote letters to all of the powerful officials she knew, including George Washington, Jonathan Howard, who she knew personally. She ⁓ had a petition signed by 350 citizens of Baltimore saying that they wanted her to be their postmistress. She wrote newspaper articles in Philly, New York and Boston, or in Baltimore. kind of stoking support for her reinstatement. She petitioned Congress twice to get her job back and created over the course of those kind of petitioning activities, a archive of her own. So she puts together actually what has been described as the most extensively documented petition attempt at the first Congress in which She includes a lot of this documentation. So her letter to George Washington, her account of her dismissal, the letter signed by 350 citizens of Baltimore. ⁓ She writes them in beautiful handwriting, the 18th century handwriting that you dream to see when you encounter the archives, so easy to read. ⁓ And she archived them in US archives at Congress. So after her petition attempts and made sure even though she didn't get her job back at that point, it was enormously clear that it was not going to go that way. But she nevertheless wrote a meticulously detailed account of her story, hyper documented it with her experience, and then archived it in ⁓ the records of the US government for us. So I think for me, ⁓ getting to this story, ⁓ it really made sense for me first when I kind of picked up actually that set. of records that Goddard put together herself. It's like, ⁓ wow, this is something different. is she clearly understood the power of making the case through documentary sources, right? It's like she was doing the work that we would be doing to pull together the argumentation for whatever point. And so the fact that she was wired that way, and so that just makes it such an interesting entree for for storytelling that like these records are lined up or we can stack them up in different combinations to be able to really peel back more about the day-to-day struggle that she was ⁓ trying to navigate at that time. So the archives, you know, like... I joke that we ask our collection questions because that's the way that you get new stories, right? Like not all the stories have been told, nor can they ever be told. It's all about the questions you ask. thank you so much for taking the time to think through objects and collections and our amazing Yeah, I love the interplay between material culture and these stories. And I also think, you know, a lot of times... we here in the historic preservation world, like, well, why does this matter today? Or what does this tell us about today? And I love this idea of the agency of documenting your own story, of telling your own story. And even if you don't succeed in whatever it might be, ⁓ documenting that and putting together your story so that subsequent generations can find that. And I feel like there's something really profound in that for the 250th as well, of just like telling your story. writing down what happened to you and why it happened, what that meant, like Mary Catherine Goddard, you know, make a Goddard-esque archive. It also got me thinking, too, you talk about the collections, and I've had the chance on a couple different occasions to walk through the Maryland Center for History and Culture's collections, and you were describing that chest. And Katie, I feel like you should check the catalog. You might have it. I mean, who knows? Yeah, you might as well. My eyes. Yeah, so that that might be there. Maybe you can check in and let us know on the next episode. But yeah, I want to give you the last word, Christie. It's been a pleasure having you here. But about, you know, where you take this research, where people can get the book, ⁓ when they'll get it, all that kind of stuff and what you're working on next. ⁓ thank you. Thank you so much. And, you know, just one last little cheerleading plug for Mary Catherine Goddard, because I think I agree. Her archival practices, I think are profoundly instructive, just a useful strategy ⁓ for all of us to learn from. And she was also a phenomenal writer. So reading her her materials kind of from her own pen are exciting and fun. She describes herself as the enemy in petticoats at certain moments and ⁓ ⁓ describes, ⁓ she used sarcasm, she's angry, you know, in a lot of her writing and that really comes across through her pen. So it's writing that actually rewards reading and feels enormously human because she doesn't try to hide her anger and I think that that that matters too. ⁓ And then as far as the book, ⁓ so it is ⁓ currently, I'm actually in the process of doing the last round of revisions and ⁓ hope to have it out this summer. So hopefully this summer at the 250th, ⁓ Postal Hackers will be out and ⁓ Mary Catherine Goddard's story is really at the forefront of this. ⁓ Some of the other chapters that ⁓ I explore in the book that I didn't really get to talk too much about today. I'm also interested in kind of the racial exclusions of the US Postal Service. So one of the chapters that follows right after Goddard's. actually looks at an 1802 racial exclusionary policy in the US postal system that prevented ⁓ anyone other than a free white person from working for the post office, ⁓ either as a postmaster or as a laborer carrying the mail, ⁓ which ⁓ kind of upended kind of a decade of past precedent. ⁓ And so the chapter really looks at how that policy came out of the Haitian Revolution. and also just a fear truly of Black citizenship. And so the post office ⁓ responded by shutting down ⁓ certain kinds of communication along racial lines. So the book is interested in the ways the post office closes off certain avenues of collectivity and communication. But at all of the ways that people ⁓ relentlessly counter that. I think that both of ⁓ Goddard's case and ⁓ even the chapters that follow. really show people who are just very savvy and persistent in their ⁓ extraordinary use of these everyday tools. And so I hope that that can be motivating for us, you know, who I think ⁓ can learn a lot, you know, kind of from these histories of people who are ⁓ using writing to counter injustice ⁓ and really deeply invested in democracy. think a lot of the figures in this book are very interested in that. underlying value. So we can learn a lot, I think, from their writing and from their actions. Well, as soon as the book's out, we'll make sure that that's linked in the show notes to this episode and to anything else that we publish on this. been, ⁓ you know, talk about motivating. This has been a motivating conversation ⁓ and really appreciate the time that you spent with us. ⁓ Thanks so much again, Dr. Kristi Potroff and We've been talking all about Mary Catherine Goddard and her forthcoming book, Postal Hackers, and the revolutionary thinking and ideas behind some of these individuals. Katie, this has been another good one. Thanks for helping us set this one up. Yeah, thanks so much. It's great. Thanks. Thanks for listening to Preservecast. To dig deeper into this episode's story, head over to Preservecast.org for show notes and our collection of previous episodes. Don't forget to engage with this podcast by subscribing, commenting, and leaving a review. Follow along on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at Preservecast for even more. Preservecast is currently recorded in Walkersville, and sponsored by the 1772 Foundation and powered by Preservation Maryland. Thanks for listening and keep on preserving.