07/04/2026
250 years ago, not everyone who shaped our beginning wore a tricorn hat. Yes, the story of America’s founding was written mostly about men. But women were there too: printing the Declaration, writing the plays and histories that shaped the Revolution, publishing poetry that proved Black Americans’ brilliance to the world, suing for their own freedom under the new laws of liberty, and fighting in battle disguised as soldiers.
This Fourth of July, as we wish America a happy 250th birthday, we’re honoring 6 women whose courage and conviction helped build the nation we celebrate today: Mary Katherine Goddard, Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Phillis Wheatley, Elizabeth Freeman, and Deborah Sampson.
Did you know a woman’s signature is on the Declaration of Independence?
When the Declaration of Independence was first printed with the names of its signers, it was Mary Katherine Goddard who made it happen. As a Baltimore printer and one of the only women trusted with the job, she risked everything for the cause, and she printed her own name at the bottom of the document alongside theirs.
Her work helped preserve one of the nation’s most important documents for generations to come.
Abigail Adams had one request for the founding fathers: don’t forget about us.
Nearly 250 years before women had a real voice in government, Abigail was already pushing for one, writing to her husband John during the Continental Congress that “all men would be tyrants if they could,” and urging him to “remember the ladies” as the nation’s new laws were drafted.
He brushed it off. History remembers her anyway.
Phillis Wheatley wrote her way into a conversation the founders never expected her to be part of.
Enslaved, self-taught, and barely out of her teens, Wheatley published poetry so accomplished that Boston’s elite made her defend, in person, that she’d actually written it herself. Her words challenged assumptions about race, intellect, and freedom, and expanded the conversation about what liberty should really mean in a new nation.
Elizabeth Freeman heard “all are born free and equal” and decided to hold the country to it.
Enslaved in Massachusetts, Freeman took her enslaver to
