Martha Ballard Quotes

Martha Ballard is the great-aunt of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross. She is also the great-great-grandmother of Mary Hobart, one of the first female physicians in the United States.

Everything in arms. Did not find time to sit down till 2 pm.” The phrase is idiomatic, of course, yet it suggests an attitude. A house could be an adversary. Turn your back, and it rippled into disorder. Chairs tipped. Candles slumped. Egg yolks hardened in cold skillets. Dust settled like snow. Only by constant effort could a woman conquer her possessions. Mustering grease and ashes, shaking feather beds and pillows to attention, scrubbing floors and linens into subjection, she restored a fragile order to a fallen world.

Without the diary we would know nothing of her life after the last of her children was born, nothing of the 816 deliveries she performed between 1785 and 1812. We would not even be certain she had been a midwife. In the spring of 1789, Martha faced a flooding river and a rising tide of births. She attended seven deliveries in March and another seven before the end of April, twice her monthly average. On April 23 she went down the Kennebec to visit several families on the west side of the river opposite Bumberhook. This is how she told

How long God will preserve my strength to perform as I have done of late he only knows. May I trust in him at all times and do good and hee will fullfill his promis according to my Day. May he giv me strength and may I Conduct accordingly.

[She] was a true light upon a hill. She was a person of humility, affability, compassion and on whose tongue was the law of kindness. Her ear was open to the complaints of the afflicted, and her hand was open for the supply of the needy. If others were so unhappy as to divide into parties and to burn with contention, yet she remained a common friend to all. She was...ready to minister to them to the utmost of her power.

Women, to use a Biblical metaphor, performed their works under a bushel; men’s candles burned on the hill.

God as the controlling power in the universe allowed death and sorrow but also provided ways to transform those events into good.

I made the best decision of my life twenty-three years ago when I married Ashley Lawhon. He has made all the difference in a life that could have gone either way. That’s a gift and a mercy that cannot be explained. He’s the reason for my laugh lines and also my stretch marks (hello, four children). He is the inspiration for every touching thing that Martha Ballard says about marriage in this book. He’s the reason that I have no interest in writing about bad marriages. He makes me laugh every day. He lets me sleep in every day. He is my best friend, my safe place, my one and only lover. I am who I am today because he has loved me well. That is a thing