History: Author's Intent for A Midwife's Tale

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a professor at Harvard University and also a historian of women and early American history. Along with A Midwife’s Tale she has written other books including Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History and Good Wives and The Age of Homespun. A Midwife’s Tale was likely her most recognized and won the Pulitzer Prize for history and was the source for a documentary. Ulrich had three main reasons for writing her book A Midwife’s Tale; for Martha, for women, and for herself.


Martha Ballard was an incredible hard working woman even by eighteenth and nineteenth century standards. Martha took care of her neighbors through sickness and troubles while maintaining her own home and watching over her family. She delivered over eight hundred and fourteen babies, carefully documenting each along with her daily activities. The fact that Martha kept such a diary that documented so much was amazing; but few other people seemed to feel this way. Ulrich realized the unique and remarkableness of the diary and of Martha herself and wanted to give them some justice. Many people found Martha Ballard’s diary to be dull or to have too many topics that related to sexual behavior, so not much was done with it. Ulrich wanted to change that, and so wrote her book; not as a substitution for Martha’s diary, but to shed some light on the importance of the diary and on Martha’s unique and laborious life.


As a feminist, Ulrich was especially drawn to Martha Ballard’s diary. Through her diary one can see that some of the common assumptions about woman during Martha’s time might not be completely true. It is clear in the diary that women not only kept house and garden while raising children, (hard work in itself) but many also had other jobs such as midwifery, or in the area of textiles and were business women in their own way. Ulrich wanted to show the importance of women in early American communities as they don’t always get their due; she wanted to show all the work that women really did do.


As a historian Ulrich was interested in Martha Ballard’s diary on a personal level as well. By researching events in Martha’s diary Ulrich delved into many historical documents and learned a great deal of history not only about Martha, but about the community in which she lived and other historical events surrounding the diary and revelations on the ways people lived during Martha’s time.


The history of Martha and the history hidden in her diary, also the ability to explore the roles of women in Martha’s time and show their crucial place interested Ulrich. She wanted to give Martha Ballard’s under appreciated diary some of the attention it deserved, and so with these reasons combining she wrote her book A Midwife’s Tale: The life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812.