Sarah Goddard

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Sarah Updike was born to wealth at Cocumscussoc plantation at the turn of the eighteenth century, the daughter of Ludowick and Abigail Newton Updike. Her great-grandfather was Richard Smith, friend of Roger Williams. Her education, in the fashion of the day, was by a tutor who lived in her home.

In 1735 she married Dr. Giles Goddard of New London who left her a widow in 1757. Her son, William, who had been an apprentice printer in New Haven and New York, set up a print shop in Providence in 1762, with his mother's financial assistance, and began printing the Providence Gazette and Country Journal, the town’s first newspaper. He suspended publication in the spring of 1765, and left the shop to be run by his mother and sister, Mary katherine.

The suspension of the Gazette coincided with the Stamp Act crisis, so on August 24, 1765 the Gazette appeared again under the auspices of Sarah Goddard, who devoted a special issue to the Stamp Act, one of the defining issues at the basis of the American Revolutionary movement. Although William Goddard returned briefly in 1766, he once again departed, leaving the press in the hands of his mother and sister. Sarah printed the Providence Gazette on a weekly basis, providing Providence with a public forum that helped to further the cause of American independence and the political career of Stephen Hopkins. In September, 1767 Sarah Goddard took on John Carter as a partner; a year later the shop was sold to Carter. She then moved to join her son in Philadelphia. This pioneering printer and journalist died there on January 5, 1770.

Her children also excelled in the fields of journalism and printing. Her son William became editor the large and prominent Pennsylvania Chronicle and the Maryland Journal. Daughter Mary Katherine (1738-1816) was a noted newspaper publisher, printer, bookseller and postmaster in Pennsylvania and Maryland.