Martha Ballard
University of Maine
In Martha Ballard’s first diary entry on January 1, 1785, she notes that she is unwell. Her last diary entry shortly before her death ends the same way. In the 27 years in between, the midwife and healer delivered hundreds of babies, treated illnesses, attended autopsies, testified in court, and shared in the struggles and celebrations of her Hallowell neighbors – and recorded all of it on unbound pages that were both spare and revealing. And if it weren‚Äôt for the women in Ballard’s family, one of the most important firsthand accounts of early American life may have been lost.
When Ballard died in 1812 at the age of 77, her daughter Dolly saved her mother’s nearly 1,400 pages of daily observations about the births, deaths, illnesses, crime, weather, work, and family life of a rural Maine community. In 1884, her diary was given to her great-great-granddaughter, Dr. Mary Hobart, who practiced obstetrics at a women’s hospital in Boston for 30 years. It was Hobart who ensured the diary would be more than a family heirloom. In 1930, she donated it to the Maine State Library, where it remains.
Today, Ballard’s private diary is a public legacy. In 1990, Ballard’s diary reached national recognition with the publication of historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Midwife’s Tale. Interest in her life has continued to grow in the decades since, inspiring films, novels, walking tours, and other public programs. Not far from where Ballard’s home once stood, a commemorative statue and memorial is scheduled to be dedicated in Augusta’s Mill Park in the summer of 2026.
