Tristen Willhelm Dr. Nichols 2/18/2013 1. Why is a Midwifes Tale considered to be a primary document?

Why are primary documents important to the study of history? What are some of the problems associated with primary documents and the study of history? A Midwifes Tale is a primary document due to the fact that it gives the accounts and experiences of Martha Ballard, a woman living first hand in the eighteenth to early nineteenth century. The journal itself is a primary document as well as the novel, in accordance with definition by Yale University primary sources can also include autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories recorded later. Primary documents are important for the study of history because they provide first-hand accounts of what day to day life was like in the period being researched. They take a large amount of speculation and guess work out of the process, while at the same time opening more avenues for historians to ponder the more complex workings of times since passed. Though immensely useful, the use of primary documents can still leave something to be desired. Most will only give a small glimpse of a society compared to the bigger picture of the time period as a whole, providing personal insights and observations but leaving gaps in the workings of society outside the sphere the author of the primary document lived in. Changes in writing and language between the time of the document and present day also put forth another

hurdle. Even in just the few hundred years between Marthas diary and modern day English can leave you wondering even the basic meanings of words and phrases, let alone the subtle complexities that certain language can present in context of the times, that is to say if the person writing the document was even educated enough to give a good insight into the true happenings of the time. 2. Who was Martha Ballard, when and where did she live? Martha Ballard was a midwife in eighteenth to nineteenth century New England. Born in 1735 in Oxford, Massachusetts, she was the wife to Ephraim Ballard and the mother of their nine children, though three of them died in 1769 due to a diphtheria epidemic. In 1785 after their family moved to Hallowell, Maine she began keeping her diary of day to day life, accounts and midwifery until her death in 1812. 3. Explain the numerous roles of a midwife in colonial/early American society. The midwife in colonial/early American society was in ways similar to those who still practice midwifery today, but in many ways much more than that. They were not just practitioners of medicine, or in the case of early society healing. These women were also wives, tradeswoman, they tended gardens and handled accounts of their own in the household and were generally a major part of the community around them. It was upon the midwife to run back and forth delivering the staggering amount of children birthed at the time, while still upholding wifely and

community duties. Martha Ballard kept her house, entertained guests, healed the sick and comforted the downtrodden, she kept her house and raised her children as well as dealing with the business of collecting debts from those she serviced. 4. What was the status of the midwife and their relationship with other women and men? The midwife was often treated much as a doctor would be today, though in comparison to physicians of the period they may have been looked down upon by some as being inferior in medicinal practices. They were called upon to heal the sick and birth children, and thus it feels as if they had a great sense of honor in the community. They were often the first people sought after, rather than the more expensive and sometimes experimental physicians. Though their interactions with men did indeed go beyond idle conversation and healing into the world of economic and occasionally legal dealings, their relationship with the women of the town was much more developed. The birthing process for Early American times involved a lot of support not just from midwives and nurses, but from neighbors and families. A gathering of women would occur once true labor began and would sometimes last through the night or in the case of some helpers through the next week. For the midwife to be there for as many gatherings as she delivered babies it would seem to me that they would be much more deeply ingrained in more circles of women than your average housewife.

5. How did the scientific doctors interact with the midwives? Most of the scientific doctors saw themselves as more educated and of a superior status to the midwives. Though not all that held this belief were necessarily hostile against the women, many were. Many called them ritual healers and too traditional, that their practices were outdated in comparison to the medicine they knew, though many still used the same herbs as the housewives on top of the more sophisticated chemical medicines. Often medical authors of the century would shoot down the practices of midwives calling them unnecessary and simply the gathering of woman in order to spread gossip and rumor in a disgusting fashion. Some on the other hand, while not admitting the need for them, simply embraced their help whenever needed or available. Spreading their workload of minor illnesses to the midwives and concerning themselves with worse off cases, or politics.

External references: http://www.yale.edu/collections_collaborative/primarysources/primarysources.htm l

http://dohistory.org/martha/index.html