Special Delivery: Women Who Refused to Be Returned to Sender

The story of the first female postmaster, and the woman who proved that wrong centuries later.

Dear Reader,

March, in addition to being meteorologically unwell, is also Women’s History Month. Which feels like a good time to talk about two women who quite literally carried things forward.

Let’s start in 1775.

Mary Katharine Goddard, 1938

Mary Katharine Goddard is running the Baltimore post office during the Revolutionary War. Which already feels like a job description that should come with hazard pay and a strong drink. She’s also a printer, publishing a newspaper, and in 1777 she prints the Declaration of Independence, with most of the signers’ names.

Including her own.

Which is a pretty big power move. Imagine being like: Yeah, John, love what you’ve done here. Though your signature takes up most of the space, I’ll just put my name on it as well.

Goddard is considered the first woman to hold a federal government position. But in 1789, along comes Samuel Osgood, the first Postmaster General of the United States, who fires her. (More like Samuel Notgood.)

Why? Confidentially he wanted to appoint a political ally, but publicly he went with sexism, saying he believed the role required more travel than a woman could handle.

Girl, please.

Have you ever seen a woman navigate an airport with a roller bag, a tote, a purse, and a crying child who has somehow lost a shoe?

Mary Katharine Goddard was running a post office during a war. I think she could have handled a carriage ride. But history does what it does. It removes her. It moves on.

And then, 225 years later, enters Megan Jane Brennan.

Megan Jane Brennan, 2015

She starts as a letter carrier, on the ground, doing the work in snow, rain and heat. After working her way up (with a year off to get her MBA at MIT, I might add), she becomes the first woman to serve as Postmaster General of the United States in 2015. The actual top job.

By then, the role involves overseeing almost 500,000 employees, dealing with the collapse of first-class mail, the growth of package delivery, and navigating an organization built on paper in a digital world.

No big deal.

More importantly, no one seemed particularly worried about whether she could handle the travel.

It would be nice to think we’ve moved past the idea that women can’t handle the job. And mostly, we have. Though every now and then, someone in power still seems to look at a woman running the Postal Service and think: Are we sure about this?

To which history, patiently, replies: Yes, we are.

Which is the thing about progress, sometimes it just quietly corrects a very old, very bad assumption. That women couldn’t carry the load. That they couldn’t go the distance. That they couldn’t, quite literally, deliver.

Mary Katharine Goddard knew otherwise. Megan Jane Brennan proved it at scale. And the rest of us? We’re still sending things: letters, notes, pieces of ourselves, and hoping they arrive intact. And somewhere along the line, a woman made sure they did.

With love (and gratitude for the women who came before),

P.S. If you’ve ever mailed a letter and wondered if it would make it…thank a woman.

SONG OF THE WEEK

Some Postman by The Presidents of the United States of America

NEW BOOK COMING OUT!

ATTENTION BOOK LOVERS: Your Dream Cruise Is Here!

Felice Cohen is an award-winning author, best known for squeezing big ideas into small spaces—like her 90-square-foot NYC apartment (yes, really). Her books include Half In: A Coming-of-Age Memoir of Forbidden Love, 90 Lessons for Living Large in 90 Square Feet, and What Papa Told Me, with praise from legends like Elie Wiesel and Rita Mae Brown. Her viral YouTube tour has racked up over 25 million views—mostly from people wondering where she kept her shoes. More at felicecohen.com.