A Midwife’s Tale (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Laurel Thatcher
- First Published: 1990
- Type of Work: Social history
- Time of Work: 1750-1820
- Setting: Maine, along the Kennebec River
- Principal Characters: Martha Ballard, Ephraim Ballard, Hannah and Dolly Ballard, Parthenia Barton, Rebecca Foster, James Purrinton, Henry Sewall
- Genres: Nonfiction, Diary, History, Biography
- Subjects: Values, Sex or sexuality, Gender roles, Nineteenth century, Doctors, Manners or customs, New England, Trials, Pregnancy, Rape, Violence, Eighteenth century, Illegitimacy, Medicine, Childbirth, Career women, Frontier or pioneer life, Gardens or gardening, Societies, Republics
- Locales: Maine
Martha Ballard’s twenty-seven-year diary, covering 9,965 days, is a unique record of a midwife’s life in frontier Maine on the Kennebec River, brought to life by veteran women’s history professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. The diary, long available to researchers, was not thought worthy of reprinting by earlier historians despite its being one of the few documents in this period from the hand of a woman and the only one by a midwife.
Martha Ballard (1735-1812) was a midwife—and more. Her record, together with the fascinating context developed by Ulrich, gives readers a...
[The entire page is 2584 words long]
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