This is a work of non-fiction, based on a diary kept by a midwife in Maine from 1785 to 1812. I heard about the book in my intro to archives class, during my first semester at library school. I gave my mom a copy for Christmas that year, and picked up a copy for myself just a few weeks ago at the League of Women Voters annual book sale here.

It is not a transcription of the diary itself, but each chapter starts with a selection from the diary. See, the diary itself is not a terribly exciting read, and most readers would miss the important aspects. The spelling and grammar is not standardized at all. Entries are between a couple sentences to a paragraph long.

Ulrich's background information and commentary on the diary is the interesting part. She explains what Martha is writing about, and makes connections of information and themes throughout the years. She has kept all the generations of John Shaws straight for us, and provided an index and copious notes.

The most valuable part of this book, I think, is the description of sexual morals and reality in the new United States -- and thus probably also England -- at the turn of the 19th century. We think of the people of the thirteen colonies that formed the U.S. as Puritans, and we probably draw most of our assumptions about their sexuality from The Scarlet Letter and the like. According to Martha Ballard's dairy and Ulrich's research, this idea we have are not really accurate.

In reality, according to Martha and Ulrich, premarital sex was the norm, though not really talked about. Judging by the date of women's first children, a lot of women get married after they were already pregnant, some getting married very shortly before their babies were born. 38% of the first babies Martha delivered were conceived out of wedlock. 38%! Of these, about three quarters of the mothers married the fathers. The law gave unwed mothers opportunity to sue for child support -- and, unlike today, the powers that be were pretty happy with this, as it forced men to take responsibility for their actions.

In Martha's own family, her son Jonathan was forced to marry a young woman after the woman had given birth to her and Jonathan's child. As the midwife, Martha had the sticky place of helping the young woman in childbirth, and being a main enforcer of the social norms of marriage as well. All in all, as long as you got married before, or even shortly after, a child was born, it was ok. Aside from Jonathan, two of Martha's other children also were pregnant/had a pregnant partner before their weddings.

Also, the wedding itself was not terribly important, aside from making everything legal and religious. The date that is celebrated and commemorated is the one a couple "goes to housekeeping," that is, the day they move in together. This day might be several weeks, maybe even a month or two after the actual marriage. In the intervening time, the couple would visit each other at their parents' houses, spend overnights, and finish collecting the things they would need to set up house. But, the days and weeks leading up to the wedding looked much the same, with the groom-to-be visiting his affianced in her parents' house, and often spending the night. In Martha's diary, the weddings of her children and nieces barely gets mentioned among all the other goings on.

Another interesting aspect is the discussion of the changes in medical practice going on at the time. Medicine was becoming more professionalized, and male doctors were taking over many of the functions that female practitioners had long been performing. The men were also blending a more emergency, interventionist approach to medicine into the women's kind of routine care. All this is especially visible in Martha's field of midwifery. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the men's way of doing things did not produce much better results than the women's, and in some cases the women's produced better results. Martha, for example, lost very few patients in her many years of practicing.

I highly recommend this book for those interested in women's history, history of the early United States, or medical history. That it is based on, and transcribes parts of, a primary document makes it especially valuable.

There is also a movie, which works a lot like the book. We see Ulrich working with the manuscript, hear parts of the diary being read, and see very accurate reenactments of what the diary discusses.

This is one of the most important works in both women's history and Maine history for the post-Revolutionary period. ( )

Terrific social history work which examines the life of a typical American woman in the early Federal period through her diary. Wonderfully written and illuminating this is a must-read for anyone interested in American history beyond the typical "great men" stories. ( )

This book won the 1991 Pulitzer History prize--which is why I read it. I have now read 42 of the winners of the Pulitzer History prize. The book is based on an actual diary kept by a midwife in Maine for the years 1785 to her death in 1812. She was not a great speller, but her diary is found by the gifted author of this book to be full of interest, and by the time I finished this book I agreed that it is an unusual diary filled with interest for anyone interested in midwifery and in the early days of Maine. It is amazing what Martha Ballard accomplished in her years of service to her family and the people of her community. A much better reading experience than I expected. ( )

History and material culture through personal narrative and biography. Ulrich brings us into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into rural new england through Martha Ballards life.