Ulrich begins each chapter by transcribing a few entries from Martha’s diary,
from the month and year listed in the chapter title. Ulrich follows these entries
with an essay that further explains the entries’ details and relates the entries to
what happened to Martha in the surrounding few years. Ulrich explains and builds on
the entries with her own analysis, and she provides a wider historical context by
drawing from documents such as town records and the diaries of Martha’s New England
contemporaries.
Martha Moore was born in 1735 in the small town of Oxford, Massachusetts, to a
well-educated family. She married Ephraim Ballard in 1754 and had her first child,
Cyrus, two years later. She quickly had five more children—four daughters and one
more son—but lost three of the girls to a diphtheria epidemic in 1769. That same
year, she gave birth to her fifth daughter, and her sixth followed two years later.
In 1773, Ephraim traveled to Maine to find a new home for the family, finally
settling in Hallowell and taking management of the mill and property owned by a
British sympathizer who had fled to Canada. Martha and the children joined Ephraim
there in October of 1777, and Martha officially delivered her first child as a
midwife in July of 1778. Martha’s oldest daughter, Lucy, married her cousin Ephraim
Towne that same year, and in 1799, Martha gave birth to her youngest son. She begins
writing in her diary on January 1, 1785.
In August of 1787, Martha describes several events that give an overview of
the many medically related tasks she is called on to perform, including delivering
babies, answering false alarms, preparing bodies for burial, making medical calls,
dispensing pills, and harvesting and preparing healing herbs. Ulrich then
gives an overview of homeopathic remedies of the time and the relationship
between local healers and physicians. In September of 1788, Martha talks about
the goods she and her daughters trade with local women and the help
her daughters give her with the housework, particularly the weaving. Ulrich then
discusses the gender-based division of duties, the female economic subsystem of the
time period, and the importance of household help in a midwife’s career. In October
of the following year, Martha’s family is forced to relocate when the mill’s
original owner returns, and she discusses the difficulties of living so much closer
to her neighbors. She also talks about being questioned when one of these new
neighbors accuses a public official of rape. Ulrich offers a fuller historical
account of the case and its participants.
In November of 1792, Martha’s niece, Parthenia Barton, who had been living
with the family for some time, marries Shubael Pitts. Martha’s daughter Hannah
marries Moses Pollard, the son of an old friend, Merriam Pollard, who often worked
as a town nurse. Ulrich then describes traditional marriage practices in those days,
including simple, work-intensive weddings and the fact that couples lived apart
until they were able to set up a household. Martha also talks about being summoned
to Sally Pierce’s delivery. Sally identified Martha’s son Jonathan as the father of
her illegitimate baby and sued him for support, which he fulfilled by marrying her.
Ulrich then discusses the histories and results of other paternity suits from that
time period. In November and December of 1793, Martha describes several
complication-free deliveries she performs in the quiet period following the
weddings. Ulrich expands upon this by explaining in more detail how these deliveries
might have gone and comparing Martha’s success rate to other historical rates.
Martha’s youngest daughter, Dolly, marries Barnabas Lambard in May of 1795,
and in Martha’s entries for January of the following year, the problem of housework
has become dramatically larger now that she has no one at home to help her with it.
In November of that year, Martha recounts that a band of armed men had attacked her
husband while he attempted to complete a survey job. Ulrich adds further
explanation, saying that poor settlers often saw surveyors as agents of richer men
who were trying to take away the land that the settlers felt they had won for
themselves. Even in these more difficult times, Martha’s medical involvement in the
community still continues, and in February of 1801, Martha talks about tending to
the death of her daughter-in-law’s nephew and being asked by the doctor to be an
attendant at his dissection. Ulrich follows this with a more detailed look at the
little boy’s history and offers a look at the changing relationship between doctors
and midwives.
By March of 1804, Martha had grown weary, troubled by untrustworthy hired
help, Jonathan’s often alcohol-induced temper, and Ephraim’s imprisonment for debt
related to his job as a tax collector. Ulrich gives a more detailed picture of what
Ephraim’s imprisonment would have been like, after which Martha describes the
difficulties of being a woman on her own. Jonathan and his family move in with her,
but due to her strained relationship with Jonathan, and Sally’s insistence on being
mistress of the house, the move only adds to Martha’s troubles. In 1806, however,
Martha’s neighborhood faces even greater obstacles when they discover that a
neighbor, Captain Purrinton, had slaughtered almost his entire family before
committing suicide. Ulrich describes the entirety of the case and gives a few
theories offered at the time as to Captain Purrinton’s motives. Eight months later,
another tragedy hits Martha’s family when the husband of her niece, Betsy Barton,
commits suicide.
By May of 1809, Martha’s focus is mainly on her garden, the preparation that
went into it, and what happened to the produce that came from it. Grandchildren are
now old enough to help her with the housework, and the number of deliveries she
attends has increased dramatically. Ulrich offers details on gardens of the time
period but also describes the larger political turmoil of the area that is only
offered in brief, family-related details in Martha’s diary. Martha attends several
deliveries early in 1812, but the stress makes her ill, and her last entry describes
the family and preacher gathering at her house on May 7. She dies a few weeks later.
The diary is passed down through Dolly’s descendents until it reaches Martha’s
great-great-granddaughter, Mary Hobart, one of the country’s early female
physicians. Mary treasures the diary but gives it to the Maine State Library in
1930 so that it might be more accessible to historians.
