Martha Moore Ballard played a pivotal role in her community as a midwife and healer. Through her diary she has become a historically important female voice documenting social, economic, and religious change in rural postcolonial America. Few women could write in the 18th century, and fewer still participated in public life, resulting in poor documentation of women’s daily lives. Because women could not own property and seldom participated in legal matters, few details regarding individual women’s lives appear in historical documents.
Read more in…
Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia and Document Collection Volume One: Precolonial North America To The Early Republic – Dr. Peg A. Lamphier And Dr. Rosanne Welch, Editors
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