Background
William Goddard was born in New London, Connecticut. He was the son of Dr. Giles Goddard, postmaster at that place, and his wife Sarah Updike, daughter of Lodowick Updike, of English and Dutch ancestry.
William Goddard was born in New London, Connecticut. He was the son of Dr. Giles Goddard, postmaster at that place, and his wife Sarah Updike, daughter of Lodowick Updike, of English and Dutch ancestry.
Goddard may have been first apprenticed in 1755 to the printing trade in New Haven under John Holt, in James Parker’s plant; but he soon removed to Parker’s printery in New York City. In 1761, he was a journeyman there with Samuel Farley.
About July 1, 1762, Goddard opened a printing-office in Providence, Rhode Island, becoming the pioneer printer of that city, and on October 20 of the same year, established the Providence Gazette; and Country Journal.
Lacking support, he suspended the journal on May 11, 1765. By the summer of 1765, having left his press in charge of his mother, he had found employment with John Holt at New York City.
In August, he returned, temporarily, to Providence and printed, on August 24, 1765, an “extraordinary” number of the Gazette, in connection with the Stamp Act agitation, but the newspaper lay moribund until resumption on August 9, 1766, upon the repeal of that act, and then the imprint was “Sarah Goddard & Company. ”
Goddard had sent Samuel Inslee to his mother as “an assistant, ” but Inslee retired with the issue of September 19, 1767, and then John Carter, who had just left Benjamin Franklin’s plant at Philadelphia, became a partner until the issue of November 12, 1768, which he published alone.
Mrs. Goddard died in 1770. Meanwhile, William Goddard had printed on September 21, 1765, on Parker’s press at Woodbridge, New Jersey, the Constitutional Courant, a patriotic sheet that caused a sensation when sold on the streets of New York.
In June 1766, he opened a printer at Philadelphia in partnership with Joseph Galloway and Thomas Wharton, hiring one of Franklin’s old presses.
He began the Pennsylvania Chronicle, and Universal Advertiser on January 26, 1767, as the organ of the Anti-Proprietary party, but soon the partnership was broken by disagreements. Goddard continued the paper alone, or with other partnership, until its expiration on February 8, 1774.
While Galloway and Wharton became Tories, Goddard clung to the Whig cause in the American Revolution. His Philadelphia ventures led to violent controversy and his language descended to “downright blackguardism” and rose at times “as shrill as a fish-wife’s curse”, but his stormy career here, as elsewhere, viewed at large, showed him the doughty champion of his age for the liberty of the press and right of public criticism.
Even financial disaster did not deter him. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1773, Goddard had gone to Baltimore as its pioneer journalist, bought out the press and printing equipment of Nicholas Hasselbach, deceased, Baltimore’s pioneer printer, and established his business.
On August 20, 1773, he established the Maryland Journal; and the Baltimore Advertiser, and May 10, 1775, it was continued by his sister, Mary Katherine, under her name. It became a semi-weekly on March 14, 1783, and on January 2, 1784, Goddard resumed the editorship.
In 1785, he took Edward Langworthy as a partner but soon dissolved the partnership, and continued alone until August 7, 1789, when he took James Angelí, his brother-in-law, as a partner, continuing until February 22, 1793. After that date, Angelí was the sole publisher.
While at Baltimore Goddard established an independent postal system, “which was afterward taken over by the Continental Congress, and exists today as the United States Post Office”.
His last years, from 1793, were spent in retirement on his wife’s farm at Johnston, Rhode Island, where, besides farming, he enjoyed a quiet life and in a social company was “the soul of conviviality”.
Goddard was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1813.
Quotes from others about the person
Isaiah Thomas, who knew him, said of him: “As a printer, he was ingenious and enterprising, ” and “few could conduct a newspaper better”; while as an editor he was “capable” and “his talents were often drawn into requisition. ”
On May 25, 1785, Goddard was married, at Cranston, Rhode Island, to Abigail Angelí (1758 - 1845), daughter of Gen. James Angelí.
