The work of Hallowell, Maine resident Martha Ballard (1735-1812) exemplifies female settlers’ varied and extensive responsibilities. Ballard’s husband, Ephraim, was surveyor and agent for the Kennebec Proprietors, and so generated extensive documentation within its papers. Meanwhile, Martha gave birth to and mothered nine children, managed the daily provisioning of her household and supervised its labors, and performed vital work as a midwife, attending 816 births within 27 years. She recorded these activities in her diary, which contains nearly daily entries spanning from 1775 to 1812.(6) Ensuring the survival of their households and the reproduction of her families and communities, the labor of women including Martha Ballard was an essential complement to the surveys and land sales documented in company records.
Women’s economic activities, in short, undergirded both Wabanaki society and White New England colonists’ investment in and settlement of early Maine.