THE MIDWIVES

Martha Ballard used home-grown remedies and traveled by horse (sometimes falling off) and canoe to her patients. ~ Laura Thatcher Ulrich

midwives in the late eighteenth century

Since colonial women didn't have the benefit of any effective means of birth control, the typical mother living in those times gave birth to between five and eight children. Many women gave birth to as many as twelve or thirteen. Childbearing was definitely woman's work. Female family and friends were first on the scene. As the time for delivery drew near, it was time to call for the midwife.

For the first 200 years in colonial America, midwives ruled supreme. But childbirth was a risky business. Colonial women were always prepared for heartbreak because of the high mortality rate for both mother and child in those years. Men didn't get into the birthing act until the early 19th century when medical strides had made childbirth both less dangerous and more lucrative.

Most midwives were older women who had learned the trade from other midwives and their own experiences in helping to deliver babies over the years. Skilled midwives were highly valued and, regardless of their social status, generally well respected members of the community. Midwives were the best paid of all the female healers, not only because they officiated at births, but because they encompassed more skills and broader experience. Midwives were also active in the community helping to deliver animals and attending baptisms or funerals of babies they had delivered. Then there was the ever popular day in court for cases of bastardy.

By the mid 18th century, physicians had largely taken over the practice for the upper crust. Attending childbirth, now classified a "science," was no longer a place for women. In a slur campaign against midwives, doctors often accused them of being untrained or, even worse, witches. Midwives still had their niche, however, attending the births of commoners.

In our family, I know of only two midwives, neither of them related to us. Both entered our family through marriage to two of our cousins. Both left extensive records of their experiences and one actually became quite famous when Laura Thatcher Ulrich wrote about her in the book A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard.

Benjamin and Lydia Peters Baldwin

Our cousin Benjamin Baldwin (3C7X) was born in Hebron, Connecticut in 1733. In 1761 he married Lydia Peters and, a few years later, they moved 185 miles north to Thetford, VT. The couple had two children born in Thetford before making another move 10 miles across the border to Orford, New Hampshire.

(1) Hebron, CT (2) Thetford, VT (3) Orford, NH

It was in Orford, a year after her third child was born, that Lydia began her practice of midwifery. A record she kept of all the births she attended began in 1768 and ended 53 years later in 1821.

By 1774, the Baldwins found themselves back in Vermont, in a town then called Moortown, now called Bradford, where Benjamin built a home and sawmill on the banks of the Waits River a half mile above the falls.

Once they were established in the town, Lydia continued the practice of midwifery. She didn't confine herself only to the town of Bradford, but went to many of the neighboring towns as well. Lydia could often be seen traveling about the countryside sidesaddle on a horse or on her "pillion, behind the man on horseback who had come for her."

Lydia kept good records of the births she attended. From those records, we know that, over 53 years, she brought into the word 926 children. Of these, 480 of them were male and 446 were female. Lydia also recorded 10 pairs of twins, 26 stillborn births and seven born to single mothers. During all those years, Lydia had only one mother who died in childbirth. Sadly, that mother's infant daughter died with her. Lydia's last case was in January of 1819, a year after her husband Benjamin died at age 85. Lydia died seven years later, also at age 85.

Ephraim and Martha Moore Ballard

Our cousin Ephraim Ballard (2C7X) was born in 1725 in Billerica. When he was only a year old, his father Jonathan (1C8X) moved the family to Oxford, Maine.

(1) Billerica (2) Oxford, ME

The move was a lucky happenstance as, nine years later, Ephraim's future wife, Martha Moore, was born in Oxford. The happy couple married twenty-eight years later in their home town. Over the next twelve years, Ephraim and Martha welcomed six children into the fold. In 1769, however, tragedy struck the family when three of their children, Martha (3C6X), 8, Triphena (3C6X), 4 and Dorothy (3C6X), 2, were taken in a diphtheria epidemic. Their second-to-last child, another Dorothy (3C6X), affectionately called Dolly, was born in 1772.

Loyalist leanings

More hard times, however, were in store for the Ballards. The Revolutionary War had just begun when Ephraim traveled 60 miles up the Kennebec River to lease some property at "Fort Halifax and all the land adjoining.” The Fort stood on a peninsula between the Kennebec and Sebasticook rivers.

Ephraim ran an inn at the fort and just happened to be there when an advance party of Benedict Arnold’s army was passing through on their way to their disastrous showdown with the British in Quebec. The soldiers refused to stay at the inn not only because it was in a "ruinous state" but also because Ephraim was reputed to be a "rank tory."

As his reputation as a Loyalist spread, the citizens of the town near the fort were none too pleased to have Ephraim in their midst. The Winslow Committee of Safety complained to the General Court that “Mr Ballard with a Number of People (supposed to be unfriendly to the grand American Cause). . .were cutting and haling Mill Logs” on Fort lands. The Court ruled that the Committee could take the fort lands "under their care." The loss of his lease meant yet another move for Ephraim.

By early 1776, Ephraim found himself in Hallowell, Maine where he managed to get a job managing mills owned by John Jones.

On the map below, the distance between Oxford and Fort Halifax is 70 miles.

(1) Oxford, ME (2) Fort Halifax, ME (3) Hallowell, ME

Mill work must have come naturally to Ephraim as the Ballards had owned and operated mills for four generations beginning with our grandfather Joseph (8GGF) in Andover in 1689. Grandpa Joseph, in addition to his mill work, was the man who had begun the witch furor in Andover in 1792.

Though Ephraim would remain in Hallowell, his first year there was rocky. It appears that his employer Jones was a Loyalist as well and neither man was too popular with the townfolk. Meanwhile Martha, still back in Oxford with the children, was evidently staging her own quiet rebellion against the revolution. The story was told by her grand-niece, the famous Clara Barton. In a passage from from Ulrich's book:

Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, later recalled being entertained by her “interesting, precise and intelligent grandmother Barton, telling us of the tea parties she and her sister Aunt Ballard (Martha) held in the cellar when grandfather was out or up and didn’t know what was going on in his own disloyal and rebellious home. . .” According to Clara, the two sisters “hung blankets inside the cellar door to prevent the savory fumes of the tea from reaching the loyal and official olfactories of 'Pater familias.’

in Hallowell

By early 1777, things began looking up for Ephraim. According to Ulrich:

[Ephraim] knew how to make peace with a revolution. When he too was accused of “Treasonable & Enimical Conduct Against the United States of America,” he not only managed to get the charges dropped but soon after was elected moderator of the Hallowell town meeting. 

Even better, by October Martha and the four children had joined Ephraim in Hallowell.

Martha began her practice of midwifery there the very next year. In 1779, the Ballard's last child, Ephraim, Jr., was born and, about that time, the future began looking a lot rosier for them. When the war finally came to a close, all was forgiven in the town of Hallowell and the Ballards not only moved back to town, but Ephraim was elected selectman, a post he held from 1784 to 1787.

Martha began her now famous diary on January 1, 1785, a work that would have thousands of entries over the next three decades. Martha's diary has provided historians with a plethora of valuable information on the lives of frontier women.

In her book, Ulrich gives details about the Ballard household in 1785:

When the diary opened, there were seven Ballards living in John Jones’s house on Bowman’s Brook—Martha and Ephraim and five unmarried children —Cyrus (3C6X) , Jonathan (3C6X), Hannah (3C6X), Dolly (3C6X), and Ephraim (3C6X). There were usually one or two hired helpers as well. All these people crowded into an unfinished house that had two rooms on the main floor and two unfinished chambers above, which were unusable in winter.

Ephraim and his sons operated a gristmill as well as a sawmill. . .There is a fitting symbolism in the division of responsibility for the two (sons). Cyrus, the quiet older son who into his forties moved in and out of his father’s household, never marrying, never achieving full independence, was assigned the grinding. Jonathan, the flamboyant and rebellious younger brother, did the rafting and ripping.

midwifery

Martha began her journal in 1785, the year she began delivering babies in earnest. The journal, written with a quill pen and homemade ink, recorded both her work and her domestic life.

While she had never received any medical training. Martha did have physicians in her family that she knew intimately, her uncle and her brother-in-law, Stephen Barton, Clara Barton's grandfather. The bulk of her training, however came from other women and from "her experience as a colonial woman." According to Ulrich:

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. Martha Ballard used home-grown remedies and traveled by horse (sometimes falling off) and canoe to her patients. She treated burns and rashes, frostbite, coughs, colic and sore throats. Most of the medicines she grew herself, gathered in the wild or transformed from household staples. She did buy some medicines, like camphor.

Over the years, Martha was able to gain the respect of physicians, particularly Dr. Samuel Coleman "from whom she purchased medicines and compounds to prepare medications," She was even allowed by some doctors she knew to attend autopsies. Between 1794 and 1808, Martha was able to observe 85 "desections" as she recorded in her journal.

going to court

Midwives were expected to be confindants for unmarried pregnant woman in the hopes that the name of the responsible father would be divulged. The father could then be legally bound to support his child. Martha certainly had her share of those cases. There were also more delicate cases where women were raped and found themselves with child. Martha wrote extensively about the sad case of Mrs. Foster whose husband had been away for some months.

Martha had delivered Rebecca Foster's 2nd baby in 1787 and treated her afterwards for a series of breast infections. In August of 1789, Rebecca felt close enough to Martha to confide in her that she had been raped by an important man in town, a judge. In addition to the rape, Rebecca had been treated badly by the townspeople when the pregnancy became apparent. It was well known in the town that her husband had been away for other employment for some months.

Mrs. Foster began tentatively by telling Martha that the judge had "lain" with other women. Martha, afraid that Mrs. Foster would “Expose & perhaps ruin her self” by accusing a "high-status male" advised her to say nothing and she wrote nothing about it in her diary at that time. Later, when Mrs. Foster finally decided to accuse the judge of raping her, Martha was called on to testify. She wrote in her diary that she “left home Early Bound for Pownalboro. Mr Ballard allso. We went on Board Leut. Pollards Boat. Stopt at Pittstown. Got to Mr Hatchs where we took Lodgings during the Courts setting. Went into coart afternoon.”

She noted down her testimony of December 23 1789:

My testimony was that Mrs Foster on the 19 of August Complaind to me that shee had received great abuses from people unknown to her, such as throwing stones at her house, striveing to get in & Lodg with her. After relating those abuses [she] said that was not the worst shee had met with since Mr Fosters absence, but shee hoped they would not quite kill her, that they Could do nothing wors than they had unless they killed her. She also said that said (Judge) North had abused her wors than any other person in the world had, but shee believed it was best for her to keep her troubles to her Selfe as mutch as shee Could till her Husband returnd which shee hopt would be soon.

After Judge North's indictment, Martha wrote:

The Charg was said North Broke into the house of Isaac Foster in the night time & Ravisht the wife of said Foster. On trial Mrs Foster apeard very Calm sedate & unmovd notwithstanding the strong atempts there were made to throw aspersions on her Carrectir. She on oath affirmd that said North Broke open the Door of her house & parpetrated the Crime of ravishment notwithstanding her Exerting her self as much as her strength would admit of.

On 10 Jul 1790, Judge North was "set to bar" before the Supreme Judicial Court. Robert Treat Paine, brother-in-law of our Patriot cousin Joseph Greenleaf (4C7X), was one of the justices hearing the case. We wrote about Joseph in our "Prelude to Revolution" post.

Not surprisingly, the judge was acquitted. According to Urich:

the town inevitably turned their backs on the family, (the Fosters) resulting in their flight from Hallowell shortly after the trial. The occurrence and sentiment around the trial of Mrs. Foster follows very closely to the way in which many rape trials at the time were treated. If reported, these women's cases were largely ignored or treated with disdain. . .  

daily life

Martha's diary, though rather monotonous at times, is still a powerful depiction of life in rural Maine at that time. Ulrich maintains that:

. . .it is in the very dailiness, the exhaustive, repetitious dailiness, that the real power of Martha Ballard’s book lies. To extract the river crossings without noting the cold days spent 'footing' stockings, to abstract the births without recording the long autumns spent winding quills, pickling meat, and sorting cabbages, is to destroy the sinews of this earnest, steady, gentle, and courageous record.

As illustration, Ulrich cited Martha's entry for April 24, 1789:

A sever Storm of rain. I was Calld at 1 h pm from Mrs Husseys by Ebenzer Hewin. . .I Crost the stream on the way on fleeting Loggs & got safe over. Wonder full is the Goodness of providence. I then proseeded on my journey. Went beyond Mr Hainses & a Larg tree blew up by the roots before me which Caused my hors to spring back & my life was spared. Great & marvillous are thy sparing mercies O God. I was assisted over the fallen tree by Mr Hains. Went on. Soon Came to a stream. The Bridg was gone. Mr Hewin took the rains waded thro & led the horse. Asisted by the same allmighty power I got safe thro & arivd unhurt.

In 1791, Ephraim lost his lease to the Jones mill. The Ballards moved into another house but continued their mill work. The textile business was so demanding that most of the family had to do their part.  Ephraim and his sons set up the operation and daughters Hannah and Dolly learned how to operate the woolen and flax wheels. Martha would then take hundreds of skeins of cotton, wool, and linen to other people to weave.

Of the family operation Ulrich writes:

That mother, father, daughters, and at least one son were all involved in setting up the weaving operation supports Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s point that in early America “men and women had to work in tandem in order to undertake any single life-sustaining chore." On closer examination, however, what is most striking about the Ballard economy is the independence of men’s and women’s labors, not only in production but in management and utilization of resources. . .Martha was willing to bake bread or mend packs for Ephraim’s surveying journeys; that he was willing to sow flax and set up the loom for her is hardly surprising. This is the kind of cooperativeness one might expect of family members.

Ephraim's main source of income however, wasn't mill work. That he left to the rest of the family while he traveled the country on surveying expeditions.

ephraim the mapmaker

Ephraim's job as a mapmaker took him far and wide throughout Massachusetts and Maine. The archives of both those states have more than a dozen maps drawn by him. Below is Ephraim's map of the town of Bowdoinham:

Most of Ephraim's maps, however can be found in the records of old land companies he worked for. These companies instructed him to "search for ponds, streams, and mill seats, to assay the quality of the soil, the 'groth of Timber,' and 'the most prominent mountains,' and to provide the committee with duplicate plans 'with a list of the Names of all the settlers. . .and the time Each settled thereon.'"

Ulrich says that "Ephraim thrived or suffered according to the fortunes of the great proprietors. . . who prospered by exploiting the timber on their lands as well as by selling settlers lots."

The job wasn't without its problems. In June of 1792 Ephraim complained that he wasn't able to finish a job "by reason of my being lame & the flys so intolerable. . .” The worst, however, was an incident in November of 1795 when Ephraim and his men were attacked by hostile settlers worried about the land around them being sold by unscrupulous companies. Martha recorded the event in her diary:

They were assaulted when a sleep last Thursday night in the wilderness by men they knew not, who robd him of his papers and instruments. They demanded them of him with a muskit presented at his breast. May we Ever praise God for his goodness in preserving him and his assistants from hurt in person.

Ephraim wrote his own account in a report to the Committee on Eastern Lands:

I was awaked by the firing of guns around my head, & one gun presented to my breast. Four armed men coming, or pressing towards me, & my Assistant & uttering the most horrid Oaths, & demanding of me to ‘deliver up, to deliver up all, God damn you, deliver the Compass, deliver up the papers, deliver up the Cannisters, God damn you take nothing out, if you do you are a dead man’ and after robbing me of my plan & papers & breaking my Compass & uttering much profane & abusive language they left me. I continued at this place with much anxiety till day light, when to my great joy I was relieved by the friendly aid & assistance of three of the Sons of Mr. Jonathan Jones. . .

Ephraim and Martha's story continues in our next post.