Martha Ballardthe HearthISFJ

On 19 December 1804, in Hallowell, in what was then the District of Maine, Martha Ballard marked an anniversary in her diary: “this is 50 years Since I became a hous keeper.” She was 69.

That same day she went to the jail to see her husband, Ephraim. He was 79. As tax collector he had been held liable for taxes he failed to collect, and he had been in the Augusta jail for months.

The next day, when she saw him again, he asked her to “keep possision of this hous at present.” The family's last solid thing was under threat, and the job of holding it fell where such jobs usually fall: on the woman who had been holding it all along.

She had been holding a great deal. Born in Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1735, she had become the midwife and healer of her river town. From 1785 to 1812 she kept a diary almost every day, and in it she recorded 816 births. Families paid her in money when they had it, and in food, cloth or labor when they didn't.

Here is an ordinary day, 24 April 1789, when she was 54. “A Severe Storm of rain.” Called out at one in the afternoon, she crossed the river by boat with “a great Sea A going,” then crossed a stream “on fleeting Loggs & got Safe over.” Her only comment: “wonderful is the Goodness of providence.” Of how she felt, not a word.

That is how Hearths keep a record. The diary is crowded with other people's births, fevers and debts. The writer appears mostly as the person who arrived.

That winter the house filled up. On 23 December she found that her son Jonathan's family “had taken possesion of my hous.” On Christmas Day his wife gave her “a Sharp reproof for doing my work.”

A woman of 69, who had been keeping house for half a century and had brought hundreds of the district's children into the world, was scolded in her own home for doing her own chores.

Out loud, as far as anyone knows, she said nothing. On the page, she let herself say it.

On the last day of the year she added three words: “feel very Gloomy.” A few lines of grievance in a diary of thousands of entries about other people. The grievance was real, and it went where it could be said without blowing the household apart.

Saying nothing at the table can look like weakness. In a full house in midwinter, with her husband in jail, it held the family together. Ephraim had asked her to keep possession. She kept it in law, lost it in fact, and never made a scene.

Ephraim was set free on 29 May 1805. On 14 September Jonathan's family moved out, and Martha had her house back. She kept writing until the spring of 1812, and died that year at 77.

For a century people called the diary dull: births, chores, weather. Read it now and you find a whole town held up by one pair of hands, and, here and there, a few lines that belong to her alone.