As she was writing her book that eventually would win a Pulitzer Prize for history, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich set a goal. "I set myself a deadline to finish when I turned 50," Ulrich told an audience at the University of Utah on Friday night.
The book, "A Midwife's Tale," chronicles the life of a New Englander named Martha Ballard and is based on a diary Ballard kept from 1785 until her death in 1812. Ballard began her diary on Jan. 1 of the year she turned 50. Her last 27 years were productive. During that time, Ballard delivered 814 babies in the farming and timber communities along the Kennebec River in Maine.Ballard's life made Ulrich "think about being 50 in a most positive way."
Ulrich almost made her goal. After eight years of research and writing, "A Midwife's Tale" was published in 1990 - when Ulrich was 51.
Ulrich, who was born in Sugar City, Idaho, and graduated from the University of Utah, is now a college professor in New Hampshire.
Martha Ballard is significant, Ulrich said, because she kept a diary. Though they were more literate than women in the Southern colonies, New England women were not as literate as New England men. Ulrich believes only three or four diaries of women of Ballard's generation and locale have survived. None of the other diarists were midwives.
Her diary allows people to understand colonial economics, medicine and society in a new way, Ulrich said.
Previous economic histories of Maine come from shipping ledgers and account books. "They show an outflow of timber and an inflow of manufactured goods from England," Ulrich said. "Almost no one is looking at women's work." Yet - her midwife practice aside - Ballard's diary shows the household manufacturing, bartering and trading of an entire community.
Ulrich said, "Martha Ballard's diary has convinced me the common assumption - that to study a woman's world is to narrow the focus - is upside down." The sparse descriptions of one woman's work greatly expand our view of early America, Ulrich believes.
"I am grateful to this busy, busy woman who kept a record of her life."
Ulrich also will speak at 3 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 16, at the University of Utah Marriott Library and 11 a.m., Tuesday, Feb. 18, in the Smith Building at Brigham Young University.