21 Facts About Martha Ballard

Martha Moore Ballard was an American midwife, healer, and diarist.

Unusual for the time, Ballard kept a diary with hundreds of entries over nearly two decades, which has provided historians with invaluable insight into colonial frontier-women's lives.

Martha Ballard married Ephraim Ballard, a land surveyor, in 1754.

Martha Ballard moved to the Kennebec Valley in Maine in 1777, two years after her husband moved there for surveying.

Martha Ballard never received any formal medical training, but her methods of treating local maladies seem to have been a culmination of her experience as a colonial woman.

Martha Ballard harvested herbs, creating teas, salves, syrups and vapors to treat anything from a cough to an aching limb.

Martha Ballard delivered 816 babies over the 27 years that she wrote her diary and was present at more than 1,000 births; the mortality rates of infants and mothers that she visited were ordinary for the United States before the 1940s.

Martha Ballard was among community medical personnel, with numerous male doctors often called as well as Martha Ballard at births; however, male physicians could override midwives when they wished to, despite the experience and expertise of the midwife.

Martha Ballard was sometimes called to observe autopsies and recorded 85 instances of what she called "desections" in her diary.

Martha Ballard took testimonies from unwed mothers that were used in paternity suits.

Martha Ballard often weighed in on paternity cases in Hallowell.

Under a 1668 Massachusetts law, midwives were often asked to pressure young unwed mothers into naming the father of her child in the throes of labor, an action which Martha Ballard frequently participated in.

Martha Ballard served as a witness in the trial of Judge Joseph North in 1789 held at Pownalborough Courthouse.

At first not believing her due to the social standing of the judge, Martha Ballard began to serve as a witness for the case, providing crucial contextual evidence to the validity of Foster's accusation.

Foster began to confide in Martha Ballard, reporting her fear of the abuses by the local men.

Martha Ballard was not one for judgement or gossip about the goings on in Hallowell so it was out of character for her when Ulrich writes that it was "the great surprise" when Judge North was acquitted.

From when she was 50 until her death in 1812, Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her work and domestic life in Hallowell on the Kennebec River, District of Maine.

Martha Ballard's writing illustrates struggles and tragedies within her own family and local crimes and scandals.

The last birth that Martha Ballard attended was on April 26,1812.

Martha Ballard's obituary was published on June 9,1812, in the American Advocate and simply stated:.

For many years, Martha Ballard's diary was not considered to be of scholarly interest since it was generally dismissed as repetitive and ordinary.