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

Content Warning: This section of the study guide contains references to child/pregnancy loss, mass murder, and sexual assault.

“Necessity and a fickle river cultivated a kind of bravado among Hallowell folks.”

With one line, Ulrich introduces the setting and people of Hallowell. Hallowell, which had yet to be colonized by Europeans, was akin to a frontier at the time of the Ballards’ move north, and the “bravado” Ulrich mentions connotes a sense of bravery among those willing to try to make a home in the Kennebec River Valley.

“Reading such a story, we can easily imagine Martha as an archetypical pioneer. Indeed, the rhythms of her story echo the seventeenth-century captivity narratives that gave New England its first frontier heroines.”

The idea of the frontier and pioneering appears again, matching with the imagery of the “fickle” river. Ulrich’s call back to literature from the century before Martha’s life also roots her story with a sense of historicity. Though fictional tales likely exaggerated elements of frontier life, Martha’s diary paints them with strokes of realism.

“Yet it is in the very dailiness, the exhaustive, repetitious dailiness, that the real power of Martha Ballard’s book lies.”

The power of Martha’s diary is in its repetitive nature. Ulrich can establish a microhistorical study using the diary due to its daily entries, as it can accurately stand as an honest depiction of the minutiae of Martha’s life and allows historians to trace even gradual changes over months, years, and decades. The “exhaustive, repetitive” nature of it also foreshadows the often-tedious rhythms of balancing domestic labor, textile production, and midwifery that Martha depicted.