Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine, this intimate history illuminates the medical practices, household economies, religious rivalries, and sexual mores of the New England frontier. Between 1785 and 1812, a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in twenty-seven years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine. On the basis of that diary, Laurel...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine, "A truly talented historian unravels the fascinating life of a community that is so foreign, and yet so similar to our own" (The New York Times Book Review).

Between 1785 and 1812 a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic...

Presents a revelatory and deeply intimate exploration of the world of early Mormon women that draws on nineteenth-century diaries, letters, albums, minute-books, and quilts created by first-generation Latter-Day Saints. "A stunning and sure-to-be controversial book that pieces together, through more than two dozen nineteenth-century diaries, letters, albums, minute-books, and quilts left by first-generation Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, the never-before-told...

Tells the story of two women, 200 years apart, linked together by the massive yet cryptic diary one of them left behind. The life and world of Martha Ballard, a frontier midwife in Maine, is reconstructed through her diary. She lived through the economic boom and bust, and political and social turmoil of the decades following the American Revolution.