Producer Laurie Kahn-Leavitt talks about the making of the film A Midwife's Tale, and Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich discusses the importance of Martha Ballard's diary and what it reveals about 17th century America and women's roles at that time.
In 1785 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.
