A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

Loved this book—so respectful of the author and the author’s times!! A truthful and straightforward history of midwifery. Would gladly recommend!!

The book was exactly what I wanted and arrived quickly.

This book is rather complicated. With excerpts from Martha's diary, we are treated to a peek at life in Hallowell Maine from 1785-1812. Part of what fascinated me was the use of herbal remedies, and other resources close to hand.In years past I have done a bit of study into these things myself, and was intrigued by how and what herbs were used by this woman who was midwife and doctor, nurse and friend to the women in her community. He usual fee was 6 pence, but she was often paid in goods or service and often according to the means of the family she visited. One family might pay nothing, and Martha would forgive the debt, just to see the woman brought to bed with her child safely and in good health for both. Another family would take pride in paying her very handsomely with goods and money far beyond what she requested.Martha made her way to these families in the best and the worst of circumstances. A winters night might find her plowing through waist high snow on foot. Another early morning might find her ensconced in a carriage and carried by this means to her door. This, as you can imagine was a rare event. Far more often is was on foot or horseback.It was common in those days for women to give birth every two years. This ensured that the family would have help needed to maintain their independence, as each child soon learned tasks that helped to provide the family with support of one kind or another. What tasks learned depended mostly upon the gender of the child, and the business of the family.The research done by Ulrich provides us with a much broader view than we would have been given by Martha's diary alone. Comparisons are made to other towns, other locations regarding births, deaths and family occupation. IT is explained in simple terms how one family's reliance on other family's foruse of needed tools or trade was key to their survival. One family might weave and trade the cloth for wool. It seems to me that if we had to rely on others more these days we might try a little harder to be nicer to each other.This is not to say that Martha's time was without local conflicts. For instance it was not uncommon for the head of the house to be jailed for debts. This would put his family into a very difficult and embarrassing situation.Something else that interested me and also reminded me of another book was the relationship between the midwife and the male Doctor. In the beginning things were a lot simpler and there was a great deal of cooperation between doctor and midwife. As time passed, the doctors began to feel and act in a superior manner. Eventually midwives found themselves in a much inferior position to the doctor. These things are mentioned by the author more so than by Martha. Her account is more mundane, and lends itself to the simple daily activities of the families. She kept her house, raised her family and kept local birth and death records, as well as some rather gossipy accounts of who was getting up to no good around the town.Without Martha's careful accounting there would be little record of the families of that time. There would have been no history for her own family of the triumphs and turmoils and moves and local history involving their ancestors.This is undoubtedly a book of history, and should be considered so by any thinking of reading it. There are plenty of dates and dry patches, but it was interesting to me none the less.If the topic of midwifery interests you, you might want to give it a read.. or if the history of Maine is what draws you in, this might be a book for you. I confess that it was much more of a history book then I expected, but I was determined to carry on . I am glad I did, but this one will not make it to my reread shelf.

Book was delivered promptly and like new

The Erudite scholarship and analysis of Ulrich is really incredible- what she draws forth is wonderful- highly recommended reading. Really amazing.

It was so boring and technical details and I just couldn't finish it. Other women in my group gave up on this one as well.

I absolutely ADORED this book. Martha Ballard was an incredible woman, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich does her justice with this wonderful book. I have probably read this book through, cover-to-cover, at least five times. Highly recommended for anyone interested in early American history, especially as pertains to women and their lives during that fascinating time.

We've heard stories of how our great-great-great-grandmothers rose before dawn, plowed the lower forty, baked biscuits and then raised a barn, all before noon. A Midwife's Tale seems to confirm this. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich draws upon a remarkable document, the diary of a New England midwife, Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, who recorded the details of her daily life between 1785 to 1812. Ulrich deconstructs Ballard's laconic entries to reveal the complex routine of a woman who kept a household for seven people, ran a cottage textile workshop, and served as midwife at the birth 816 infants during her 27 years of practice. (There were male physicians in the community, but they rarely intervened in this woman-dominated ritual unless there was a breech or still-birth to be dismembered.) Ballard's ministrations, in fact, went far beyond birthing to the practice of general medicine. She could apply poultices, lance abscesses, expel worms, induce vomiting, stop hemorrhages, bring down a fever, and - all else failing -- gently close the eyes of the dead. In this way, writes Ulrich, the midwife "mediated the mysteries of birth, procreation, illness, and death."With the help of collateral documents, Ulrich fills out Ballard's entries to give a more complete view of society in a milling village of the early 1800's. She also tracks Ballard's personal fortunes from the height of her prestige into eventual decline. The author takes pains to point out how much of this misfortune was inevitable (the elderly of any era are of necessity pushed from the center to the circumference of society) and how much was due to the hand dealt by fate: Martha had her daughters before her sons; the girls married and moved out, leaving their mother the care of three rather loutish males. The episode underscores how necessary a reliable pool of labor was to the running of any rural household; southern families had their slaves; northern families had their daughters. Historian John Lewis Gaddis calls this book "an exercise in historical paleontology [that] succeeds brilliantly." Winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for history.

Incredible book. The historic methodology of Thatcher is amazing, the writing's too. I'm persuaded that it is a TV series adaptation material. A beautiful work of micro-history.

LOVE IT!!!

I bought this book because I found the subject matter interesting. As I started reading I was shocked to find out that Martha Ballard was from my home town and many of the people and events mentioned in her diary were familiar to me.As a historian and I found the author's research in combination with the diary very impressive. I really enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading more of her work.

I nearly abandoned this after the first few pages because it seemed so inconsequential, but then it sucked me in and I became completely immersed in the world of Martha Ballard. It is a book that will now stay with me - a reference point in recognising the significance of quiet lives and how the detail illuminates the big themes of history. And I am in awe of the skill with which Ulrich has bound together the diary extracts with commentary that brings her subject to life and leaping off the page.

We don't know how lucky we are ! Martha Ballard was an AMAZING woman !