Martha Moore Ballard (February 9, 1735 – June 9, 1812) was an American midwife and healer. Unusually for the time, Ballard kept a diary with thousands of entries over nearly three decades, which has provided historians with invaluable insight into frontier-women's lives. Ballard was made famous by the publication of A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard based on her diary, 1785–1812 by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in 1990.
Early life and family
Martha Moore was born in Oxford, Province of Massachusetts, on February 9, 1735, to the family of Elijah Moore and Dorothy Learned Moore. There is little known about her childhood, education, and life before she began keeping her diary at age 50, but it is known that her family had medical links. These being her uncle Abijah Moore and brother-in-law Stephen Barton who were both physicians. In addition, her family is linked to Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross and granddaughter of Ballard's sister. She married Ephraim Ballard, a land surveyor, in 1754. The couple had nine children between 1756 and 1779, but lost three of them to a diphtheria epidemic in Oxford between June 17 and July 5, 1769. Ballard moved to the Kennebec Valley in Maine in 1777, two years after her husband moved there for surveying. There, Ballard earned an income as a midwife until her old age.
She and her family experienced difficult times during 1803–1804, when her husband was imprisoned for debt and her son was indicted for fraud. Ballard's obituary was published on June 9, 1812, in the American Advocate and simply stated:
Midwifery and medical history
Ballard never received any formal medical training, but her methods of treating local maladies seem to have been a culmination of her experience as a colonial woman. She was, in many ways, an herbalist. She harvested herbs, creating teas, salves, syrups and vapors in order to treat anything from a cough to an aching limb. This type of medicine was practiced often by women as they were not allowed to attend medical school. Thus, books such as The Compleat Housewife: OR, Accomplish'd Gentlewoman's Companion accompanied many women in their daily medical tasks. Ballard never mentions any such books in her writing, implying she must have gained her medical knowledge through her life's experience as opposed to education.
Ballard delivered 816 babies over the 27 years that she wrote her diary and was present at more than 1,000 births; the mortality rates of infants and mothers that she visited were ordinary for the United States before the 1940s. Ballard was among community medical personnel, with numerous male doctors often called as well as Ballard at births; however, male physicians could override midwives when they wished to, despite the experience and expertise of the midwife. Ballard was sometimes called to observe autopsies and recorded 85 instances of what she called "desections" in her diary. She also took testimonies from unwed mothers that was used in paternity suits. In addition to her medical and judicial responsibilities, Ballard frequently carried out tasks such as trading, weaving, and social visits.