Q: What did 39th Birth mean?

A: The Sewall birth was the 39th child she delivered that year, 1794.

Evidence: Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher.
A Midwife's Tale. 1990

Martha Ballard was a counter. She used her diary to keep track of the progress and products of her work. As with most women's work of the time, there was no public record of Martha Ballard's output. When she needed to remember what she had accomplished, however, she could leaf through her diary. Her accounting, personally satisfying and economically useful to her, gives us a unique and precise picture of early American women's work available in few other sources.

Close this window