Veil of Historical Misinterpretations: Martha Ballard

Throughout L. T. Ulrich’s “Piecing Together Historical Puzzles: First Case Study: Ulrich Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life Of Martha Ballard Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812 ”, Ulrich analyses numerous primary sources to further investigate the life of Martha Ballard, a midwife during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through a close study of the journal and its depicted events, Ulrich was able to revise the viewer’s understanding of social customs and knowledge of the role of women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century while uncovering the life Martha led from a veil of historical misinterpretations.

Ulrich uses the diary as a starting place to delve deeper into the life of midwife Martha Ballard. Using the few notes in Martha’s diary, Ulrich is able to piece together a chain of events supported by numerous other sources. By utilizing Martha’s consistent journal entries to form a timeline of Martha’s later years, Ulrich successfully reconstructs the puzzle of Martha’s life; a life of hard work and heartache within the community of women and citizens of Maine whom she surrounded herself with. Ulrich used the information she gleaned from the diary to search for a deeper understanding of the life Martha led. For example, upon learning through the diary that Martha’s husband was a land surveyor and cartographer, Ulrich was able to search out the maps he had so painstakingly drawn up. By comparing the landscapes of these maps to the journeys depicted in Martha’s diary, Ulrich was able to comprehend the magnitude of Martha’s journeys as a midwife. Through Martha’s journal entries depicting the spread of scarlet fever, Ulrich was also able to map the spread of the disease; and was able to confirm these findings through death records of the time.

Throughout “Piecing Together Historical Puzzles: First Case Study: Ulrich Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life Of Martha Ballard Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812 ”, Ulrich uses primary sources such as Mr. Ballard’s maps and the population censuses of the years in which the diary was written to further support documentation provided in Martha’s journal. Throughout the documentary, Ulrich consistently conveys the philosophy that primary sources are a link to the past through her constant reiteration of “Without documents there is no history”[1]. As a historical revisionist concentrating in women’s’ studies, Ulrich’s investigation is an attempt to rework our historical understanding of women, midwifery, social customs in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through her in-depth research into the midwifery practiced by Martha Ballard, Ulrich was able to uncover competition between Martha and the new male doctor in town, showing that even before the days of Rosie the Riveter women were competing with men in the workplace, as well as expressing the arising competition between traditional midwifery and new medicinal advancements of the time. The diary also conveys the linkage between wealth and power in the early years of the United States through her depiction of a parade that took place in 1800, in which the daughters of wealthy families marched in a parade dressed in black and white to symbolize liberty. Since it was the wealthy who were supposed to symbolize liberty, one is left with the understanding that the early republic viewed wealth as a means of power. However, she was unable to successfully uncover a look into the emotional being of Martha Ballard, and even noted in the documentary that the diary was a “record of work, a record of activity, rather than a record of feelings”[2]. Martha’s diary did not portray the answers to many questions Ulrich would have liked to uncover the answers to, such as how the family interacted with one another on a more personal level than who did what chores.

Over the years, the diary has often been overlooked by other historians because of the lack of written material left behind by other women of the time to reaffirm the details of the journal. The less sources that survive, the more biased our knowledge of the past becomes. Ulrich herself was originally discouraged by other scholars who felt she would never find enough information to come to a better understanding of the material within the journal.

Throughout L. T. Ulrich’s documentary entitled “Piecing Together Historical Puzzles: First Case Study: Ulrich Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life Of Martha Ballard Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812”, Ulrich utilizes various primary sources to intensify her investigation of the life of Martha Ballard, a midwife during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Through a precise study of the journal and its described events, Ulrich was able to revise the viewer’s interpretation of social customs and knowledge of the role of women in society.

Works Cited

In Class Documentary: “Piecing Together Historical Puzzles: First Case Study: Ulrich

Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life Of Martha Ballard Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812 ”

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[1] In Class Documentary: “Piecing Together Historical Puzzles: First Case Study: Ulrich Laurel Thatcher, A Midwife’s Tale: The Life Of Martha Ballard Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812 ”

[2] IBID