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"Based on her personal diary, this program presents a dramatic exploration of the life of Martha Ballard, a woman who lived through the economic boom and bust, and political and social turmoil of the decades following the American Revolution. The video is approximately three minutes longer than the broadcast version."@en
"""A midwife's tale" unfolds like a detective story, the true tale of two women, 200 years apart, linked by the massive yet cryptic diary one of them left behind. The world of frontier midwife Martha Ballard gradually takes shape as author and historian Laurel Ulrich pieces it together. "A midwife's tale" unfolds in a small Maine town during the turbulent decades following the American Revolution, a time when social change and religious conflict are rife, and survival is a fulltime job""
"Tells the true story of two women linked together by the 200 year old diary of Martha Ballard, a midwife, in Maine following the American Revolution."
"The life of Martha Ballard, a frontier midwife in Hallowell, Maine, is reconstructed from her diary by historian Laurel Ulrich."@en
""In 1785, America was a rough and chaotic young nation, and Maine its remote northern frontier. That year, at the age of 50, Martha Ballard began the diary that she would keep for the next 27 years, until her death. At a time when fewer than half the women in America were literate, Ballard faithfully recorded the weather, her daily household tasks, her midwifery duties (she delivered close to a thousand babies), her medical practice, and countless incidents that reveal the turmoil of a new nation dizzying social change, intense religious conflict, economic boom and bust as well as the grim realities of disease, domestic violence, and debtor's prison. "Without documents," notes Ulrich, "there is no history. And women left very few documents behind." By cataloging diary entries and cross-referencing other documents that mentioned the people Ballard encountered and events she experienced on her constant travels as midwife and healer, Ulrich painstakingly recreated Ballard's world. For five years, Kahn-Leavitt and Rogers collaborated with Ulrich to craft an innovative film that combines dramatic scenes of Martha Ballard's life." PBS website"@en
"From The American Experience, a dramatic and compelling exploration of the Pulitzer Prize-winning story of Martha Ballard, a midwife and mother in the wilds of Maine during the decades following the American Revolution. Her fascinating story is interwoven with the quest of a historian to uncover Ballard's world through her sparsely detailed diary."@en
"The life of Martha Ballard, a frontier midwife in Maine during the decades following the American Revolution, is reconstructed through her diary."@en
""An innovative dramatic film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning story of Martha Ballard, a midwife and mother living in the wilds of Maine during the chaotic decades following the American Revolution. In a sparsely written diary, Ballard recorded her daily struggle against poverty, disease, domestic abuse and social turmoil. Two hundred years later, her world is painstakingly recreated by a historian seeking to understand eighteenth century America through a woman's eyes."--PBS website."@en
"Martha Ballard was a midwife and mother living in the wilds of Maine during the chaotic decades following the American Revolution. Her diary is an up-close view of the poverty, disease, and day-to-day hardships of a struggling young nation. Some two hundred years later, in a quest to understand 18th-century America through a woman's eyes, historian and author Laurel Thatcher Ulrich spent eight years working through Martha's massive, but cryptic, diary. A Midwife's Tale, from the PBS American Experience collection chronicles their interwoven stories: an 18th-century midwife and the 20th-century historian who brought her words to light. This film pieces together a picture of Ballard's life in Hallowell, Maine, the characters inhabiting her daily routine, and the role of women in the post-revolutionary world."
"Follows author Laurel Ulrich as she deciphers the massive but cryptic diary kept by midwife, Martha Ballard between 1785 and 1812, during which time she served as the primary healer in her small Maine community. Her diary leaves a portrait of frontier life and especially women's place in it, during the turbulent years following the American revolution. Ballard's life and story are dramatized."@en
"The life of frontier midwife, Martha Ballard, in Hallowell, Maine is reconstructed from her diary by historian Laurel Ulrich."
"Martha Ballard, midwife in a small town in Maine, left behind a diary with cryptic entries that gives a social picture of the turbulent times following the American Revolution. Author Laurel Ulrich painstakingly works her way through the diary which unfolds a scarlet fever epidemic sweeping through Hallowell, Maine in the summer of 1787. Martha tends to her neighbours at all times of the day and night. She also delivers the child of a first-time mother who is given 20 drops of laudanum (an opiate) to delay the labour pains. We learn about the everyday lives of ordinary people. We learn that premarital pregnancy was common two hundred years ago. When her niece dies after long illness, she witnesses the autopsy alongside the town's doctors. After the Revolution a period of tremendous upheaval followed. Martha hires help to run her medical practice, but she finds them rude and rebellious. She continues with her midwifery practice into very old age and brings new life into the world. Her diary ends only with her death."
"The life of a frontier midwife, Martha Ballard, in Hallowell, Maine is reconstructed from her diary by historian Laurel Ulrich."
"The life of a frontier midwife, Martha Ballard, in Hallowell, Maine is reconstructed from her diary by historian Laurel Ulrich."@en
"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."@en