A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

The second half of Martha’s diary focuses on the misfortune that befell her and her family due to age, illness, and debt, a sharp contrast to the first half that details their relative success and happiness. She often refers to the most negative moments in life as “scenes,” which Ulrich defines as “a wrenching event, a break in the flow of life” (328-29). With Ephraim’s imprisonment and Jonathan’s alleged rude and disrespectful behavior toward Martha, the Ballard family of the early 1800s is a much different Ballard family than the diary described in 1785. The diary’s focus has shifted “from mortgages and lawyers to wood boxes and sons” (328), which demonstrates the ways “family history shaped patterns of imprisonment in an era of political and social transformation, and, conversely, how a volatile economy shaped family relations” (328). When the economy was good and the Ballards had economic success, their family worked to expand their lands and farms. When their fortune turned, especially for Ephraim, they struggled, particularly as the men of the family were in and out of debtor’s prison. These financial downturns are reflected in the dour mood of Martha’s diary entries from 1804-1805. Her dependence on Jonathan and Sally, coupled with “[becoming] a lodger in her own house, taking one room as her own, giving over the rest to her son’s family” (324), led Martha to feel as “imprisoned” as Ephraim was in jail. This further illustrates how women’s societal and economic place was tenuous; without a husband present, Martha’s family no longer views her as entitled to her own home or the independence to which she had grown accustomed.

The difficulties continued in 1806, with the Purrington Massacre shaking Hallowell. That more families moved into the Ballards’ area was initially depicted as a good thing: The communal aspect of the economy could flourish with more women around to work collaboratively on textiles and to care for each other in times of medical or emotional need. However, after the Purrington murders, the social web was ripped. Still, Religion’s Role in Everyday Life in 18th Century New England gave Martha and others the tools to cope with the heinous and unexpected “scene” in her life and community. Ulrich emphasizes the role of religion as a coping mechanism:

Martha used much the same language in commenting on this event as on any other unexpected and troublesome death in the diary […] That is, God as the controlling power in the universe allowed death and sorrow but also provided ways to transform those events into good (340).

This illustrates Martha’s conservatism in her refusal to sensationalize the tragedy as well as her religious conviction. To understand something so outside of the realm of normal, Martha turned to God, as she did with the spooked horse in the diary entry from the Introduction. It was up to God to turn the murders into something good—a lesson that those in the community could learn from. At the same time, it was also God in control, destining the murders and thus making them less terrifying and anomalistic. 

However, religion also complicated the Purrington murders, as some attempted to attribute Captain Purrington’s motive for killing his family to his Universalist beliefs—the idea that all Christians go to heaven—which pushes back against Calvinist predestination. Some argued that he killed himself and his family to send them all to heaven and free them of the toils of the mortal world. Ulrich writes, “This version of the Purrington story transformed it from a ‘Horrid Murder’ in the penny-dreadful style into an object lesson in the dangers of religious dissent” (342). Those against religious pluralism—like Sewall in his objections to Foster’s teachings—harnessed the murders for their own agenda, but Martha resisted this in her diary, instead turning to God for healing for the community and those affected by the tragic violence.