Unusual for the time, Ballard kept a diary with thousands of entries over nearly three decades, which has provided historians with invaluable insight into colonial frontier-women's lives.
[8] Ballard never received any formal medical training, but her methods of treating local maladies seem to have been a culmination of her experience as a colonial woman.
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.
Under a 1668 Massachusetts law, midwives were often asked to pressure young unwed mothers into naming the father of her child in the throes of labor, an action which Ballard frequently participated in.
[2] It appears that these records were not taken to shame women for participating in premarital sex, but more so to prevent the state from having to support children with unknown parentage.
At first not believing her due to the social standing of the judge, Ballard began to serve as a witness for the case, providing crucial contextual evidence to the validity of Foster's accusation.
In her diary, Ballard writes that "shee [Rebecca] had received great abuses from people unknown to her," and even experienced groups of men throwing rocks at the windows of her home.
[2] Ballard was not one for judgement or gossip about the goings on in Hallowell so it was out of character for her when Ulrich writes that it was "the great surprise" when Judge North was acquitted.
[2] This trial was a significant event for the tiny town of Hallowell and was born out of dislike for Mr. Issac Foster due to his unorthodox preaching style and religious history.
In the event of Rebecca Foster’s rape and accusation of the Colonel Judge North, the town inevitably turned their backs on the family, resulting in their flight from Hallowell shortly after the trial.
[11] 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.
[6] The log of daily events, written with a quill pen and homemade ink, records numerous babies delivered and illnesses treated as she travelled by horse or canoe around the Massachusetts frontier in what is today the state of Maine.
[5] Ballard's final diary entry, dated May 7th, 1812, ends thusly: "Revd mr Tippin Came and Converst Swetly and made A Prayer adapted to my Case.
Edith Hary took the papers and published The History of Augusta: First Settlements and Early Days As A Town Including The Diary of Mrs. Martha Moore Ballard in 1961.
[3] However, historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich saw potential in the diary, realizing how rare Ballard's first-hand account was after having researched a previous book on women in early New England.
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.