Martha’s Diary (1700s Maine)

Martha Ballard dipped her quill into the inkwell, the room still with sleep. Outside, the Kennebec River moved under thin ice, silent and sure. She pulled the small book closer, its pages worn, its spine soft from years of opening and closing.

She wrote simply:
“Clear. Delivered Mrs. Stevens of a son at 3 A.M.”
That was all. No note of the wind on her cheeks as she walked miles in the dark. No mention of her frozen fingers or the warmth of the newborn’s first breath.

Her diary was not for storytelling. It was for keeping account, for witnessing.

Each entry marked a day: births, deaths, fever, snow, bread baked, wool spun. Sometimes she scribbled “quarrel at meeting house,” or “visited by Mrs. Densmore,” or “Ephraim home late.” Most days were ordinary. But none were wasted.

Years passed. Babies grew. Neighbours moved or died. Her husband Ephraim grew slower in step. But every night, Martha set her lamp low and wrote one more line.

She could not have known that another woman would read those words two hundred years later and say, This mattered. That someone would call her diary a tapestry, a record of women’s labour and life when such things were seldom seen.

But Martha did not write for praise.
She wrote because the days deserved remembering.

And in that, she gave the ordinary its dignity.

Link to Martha’s Dairy.