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

The book A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 quickly became a model of social history when it was published in 1990. The book examines the life of one Maine midwife and provides a vivid examination of ordinary life in the early American republic, including the role of women in the household and local market economy, the nature of marriage, sexual relations, family life, aspects of medical practice, and the prevalence of crime and violence. The book won many awards including the Pulitzer Prize for History and the Bancroft Prize. A Midwife’s Tale was also developed into a film of the same name which aired on The American Experience television program.

The book even became the basis for a website called DoHistory (http://dohistory.org/). The site invites you to explore the process of piecing together the lives of ordinary people in the past. It is an experimental, interactive case study based on the research that went into the book and film A Midwife’s Tale. The website aims to help users learn basic skills and techniques for interpreting fragments that survive from any period in history, and to become inspired by Martha Ballard’s story to do original research on other “ordinary” people from the past.