Martha Ballard

Martha Moore Ballard (February 9, 1735 – May 7, 1812) was an American midwife, healer, and diarist. Unusual for the time, Ballard kept a diary with hundreds of entries over nearly three decades, which has provided historians with invaluable insight into colonial frontier-women's lives. Her uncle Abijah Moore and brother-in-law Stephen Barton were both physicians. accompanied many women in their daily medical tasks. Ballard never mentions any such books in her writing, implying she must have gained her medical knowledge through her life's experience as opposed to education.

Ballard delivered 816 babies over the 27 years that she wrote her diary and was present at more than 1,000 births; the mortality rates of infants and mothers that she visited were ordinary for the United States before the 1940s. Ballard was sometimes called to observe autopsies and recorded 85 instances of what she called "desections" in her diary.

Diary From when she was 50 (1785) until her death in 1812, Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her work and domestic life in Hallowell on the Kennebec River, District of Maine. Dolly Lambard. The diary was then passed on to Dolly's daughters, Sarah Lambard and Hannah Lambard Walcott after Dolly's death in 1861. It was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. When filming the series, details were given close attention. The production crew chose King's Landing Historical Settlement in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and Historic Richmond Town on Staten Island to capture Maine's three seasons: "black flies, snow and mud." The actors wore mud-soaked shoes below historically-accurate costumes, and replicas were made of the hand sewn booklets that formed the diary, so that Lee could write in them.