Martha Moore 1734-1812 & Ephraim Ballard 1725-1821
Martha Moore
Birth: February 9, 1734 in
Oxford, Worcester, Massachusetts
February 20, 1735 (per Martha's Diary)
"I am this Day 57 years old"
Father: Elijah MOORE b: 14 Mar 1701 in Sudbury, Massachusetts
Mother: Dorothy LEARNED b: 19 Jul 1715 in Oxford, Worcester, Massachusetts
Ephraim Ballard
Birth: May 6, 1725 in Billerica,
Massachusetts
Father: Jonathan BALLARD born
December 9, 1686 in Andover, Massachusetts
Mother: Hannah KIDDER born
September 2, 1696 in Medford, Massachusetts
Death: January 7, 1821 in Augusta, Maine
Children
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Cyrus BALLARD
Birth: September 11, 1756
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Lucy BALLARD
Birth: August 28, 1758 in Oxford, Worcester Co., MA
Marriage: cousin Ephraim Towne on February 1778
Ephraim "Thomas" Towne born August 28, 1754
Son of Thomas
Towne and Hannah Ballard (Jonathan)
Children: Ezra, John, Polly, Patty, Lucy, Hannah, Dolly, John & Betsey
Death: November 8, 1798 at 10am (per Martha's Diary)
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Martha BALLARD
Birth: April 7, 1761 in Oxford, Worcester Co., MA
Death: July 5, 1769 in Oxford, MA - diphtheria epidemic
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Jonathan BALLARD
Birth: March 4, 1763 in Oxford,
Massachusetts
Marriage: January 11, 1792 "Jon a was married to Sally Peirce" (per Martha's Diary)
or February 26, 1792 to Sarah "Sally" Pierce in Kennebec,
Maine
Children: Jack born 1792
Death: June 7, 1838 in Augusta, Kennebec
Co., ME
Burial: Townsend Cemetery, Augusta,
Kennebec County, Maine
GPS Coordinates: Latitude: 44.339, Longitude: -69.789
1800
United States Federal Census - Augusta, Kennebec, Maine - age 26-45
1810 United States
Federal Census - Augusta, Kennebec, Maine
1820 United States
Federal Census - Augusta, Kennebec, Maine
1830 United States
Federal Census - Augusta, Kennebec, Maine - living with son Jonathan
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Tryphena BALLARD
Birth: March 26, 1765 in Oxford, Worcester Co., MA
Death: June 17, 1769 in Oxford, MA - diphtheria epidemic
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Dorothy BALLARD
Birth: May 17, 1767 in Oxford, Worcester Co., MA
Death: July 1 , 1769 in Oxford, MA - diphtheria epidemic|
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Hannah BALLARD
Birth: August 6, 1769 in Oxford, Worcester Co., MA
Marriage: Moses Pollard on October 28, 1792 in Hallowell, Maine
Children: Rhoda, Hannah, Sally, Harry, Samuel, Dolly, Thomas, Martha, Catherine
Death: May 25, 1863 in Augusta, Maine
Note: Diary: Dec. 12, 1792 : Moses and Hannah
Pollard "go to housekeeping."
James S. Ballard's
widow Mary remarries to Thomas L Pollard born ~1807
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Dorothy "Dolly" BALLARD
Birth: September 2, 1772 in Oxford, Worcester Co., MA
Marriage: Barnabas "Barney" Lombard / Lambard on May 14, 1829 in Hollowell, Maine
Barney born ~1775 in
Massachusetts and died October 10, 1860
Children: Allen 1796, Dorothy 1797, Thomas 1799, Barnabas 1801, Lucy 1803, William 1804,
Henry Augustus 1806, Sarah Farwell 1809, Martha Town 1811, Thomas 1816,
Hannah P 1842
Death: March 14, 1861 in Augusta, Maine
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Ephraim BALLARD, Jr
Birth: March 30,
1779
Marriage: Mary Farwell on February 5, 1804
Children: Sophia, Amellia, Theodore
Death: November 5, 1829 in Bangor, Maine
1810
United States Federal Census - Augusta, Kennebec, Maine
1820
United States Federal Census - Augusta, Kennebec, Maine
1754 Ephraim and Martha were married in Oxford, Mass MARRIAGE: Vital Records of Oxford, Worcester, Massachusetts, page 129,
BALLARD Ephraim and Martha Moore, Dec. 19, 1754.
1754 Ephraim farmed leased land, an arrangement typical of the era.
17?? Jonathan and Ephraim bought in partnership land in the
east part of Charlton on which there
there was a water power; they built and operated a saw mill and
potash works.
1769 A diphtheria epidemic claims the lives of three Ballard children
1770 inherited mill and sold it
1770-1774 Taverner
1774 Ephraim was a surveyor of lands. He surveyed Livermore, Maine
Ephraim will become a surveyor and do much work for the Plymouth Proprietors, a group of
investors who claimed land in Maine.
1775 Ephraim surveyed Winslow, Maine (Fort Halifax)
1775
Ephraim travels up the Kennebec River and leases property at Fort
Halifax. Suspected of loyalist sympathies, Ephraim is soon driven
out of Fort Halifax by the local Committee of Safety.
1776 Ephraim managed the land, house and mills in
Hallowell, Maine, which were owned by John Jones, a Tory, who was not welcome in the town.
John Jones fled to Canada.
1776 American
Revolutionary War
DAR Patriot Index- Centennial Edition, part 1, page 138,
BALLARD, Ephraim: b 5-6-1725 MA d 1-7-1821 ME m Hannah (Martha) Moore PS MA (PS-Patriotic Service)
Ephraim contributed ?200 to the
American cause.
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1777 October 5, Ephraim operated a saw mill in
Hollowell/Augusta, Maine
1777 October 14, Martha Ballard joins Ephraim in
Hallowell, after traveling from Oxford.
Martha spent 1 year and 17 days living at John Jones residence.
Brother Jonathan Ballard, Thomas Towne, Ebenezer Moore, Stephen Barton
also moved to Maine at the same time. Relinquished the Jones'
property farm on the river road to Sidney.
1778 Martha midwives for the first time
1778 November 1, Ephraim and Martha move to the Jones Mill at Bowman's Brook
Mt. Vernon Avenue -
Bond Brook
Returning to State Street, walk a short distance up Mt. Vernon Avenue to where a bridge spans
Bond Brook. State Street turns into Mt. Vernon Avenue at the base of the hill. From the bridge,
look to the left and up the stream. Today there is a construction business complex. This is
approximately the site of John Jones's sawmill, where Martha Ballard and her family lived from
1778 to 1791.
1784
Ephraim Ballard becomes a selectman, a post he will hold in Hallowell
until 1787. Unlike Martha Ballard, whose life passed unrecorded
outside her diary, Ephraim Ballard figured prominently in Hallowell's
town records.
1785 Martha began the diary that she would keep for the next 27 years until her death.
She wrote nearly every day from January 1, 1785 to May 12, 1812 for a
total of almost 10,000 entries.
1786 Ephraim Ballard is elected Hallowell town moderator.
1787
On August 6, Ephraim's mill burns. Scarlet fever strikes Hallowell, and
Martha nurses its victims. In her Aug. 7 entry, Martha shows rare
sympathy for her patients, probably remembering the summer of 1769,
when three of her own children died in a similar epidemic.
1790 CENSUS: Heads of Families, page 22, Adams Town,
Berkshire, Mass.
Ballard, Ephraim (males over 16) 1, (males under 16) 1, (females) 1.
1791 April 21, the Ballard family move from the Jones Mill to their own property, which they finally have
cleared.
1792 Three Marriages:
Jan. 11: Jonathan Ballard marries Sally Pierce.
Oct. 28: Hannah Ballard marries Moses Pollard.
Nov. 18: Parthenia Barton marries Shubael Pitts.
1794
Ephraim Ballard was one of the principal surveyors for the Kennebec
Proprietors, also known as the Plymouth Company. The Proprietors,
who owned more than 600,000 acres of land along the Kennebec River,
played a key role in founding the towns of Pownalboro, Gardinerstown,
Hallowell, Winthrop, Vassalboro, and Winslow.
This
map shows the few county roads and three church parishes of early Hallowell. In 1797, the North
and Middle Parishes would split off and become the town of Augusta, partly because residents
disagreed over where to bridge the Kennebec: at the Hook in the South Parish, or farther north
at Fort Western. The bridge was built at Fort Western in 1797, a few months after the split. Mr.
Ballard drew this map on the same kind of paper that Martha Ballard cut and folded to make her
diary.
1795 Martha recorded in her diary "This is the 600th birth at which
I have attended since I came into this easter clime;" and July 25, 1797, "This is the 34th birth I have attended
this year."
1796 Ephraim is employed by the state in surveying lands at Hampden
and Bangor on the Penobscot river.
1800 United
States Federal Census - Augusta, Kennebec, Maine - Ephraim age >45 & Martha age >45
1810 United States
Federal Census - Augusta, Kennebec, Maine
1812 May 8, Martha writes for the last time in her Diary
1812 Martha dies on September 1812 at age of 77 in Old Hallowell, (Augusta), Maine

AMERICAN ADVOCATE HALLOWELL, MAINE
Tuesday June 9, 1812 |
1821 Ephraim dies on January 7, 1821 in Augusta, Maine

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Martha Ballard's
Diary (1430 pages)
Martha Ballard - A self guided
tour
One of the great women of
Kennebec County,
has been immortalized with the publishing of "A Midwife's Tale, The
Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary 1785-1812" by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, published
by Vintage in 1990.
"Martha Moore was born in 1735 in the small central Massachusetts town of Oxford, but the real story
of her life begins in Maine with the diary she kept from age fifty. Without the diary her biography
would be little more than a succession of dates. Her birth in 1735. Her marriage to Ephraim Ballard
in 1754. The births of their nine children in 1756, 1758, 1761, 1763, 1765, 1767, 1769, 1772, 1779,
and the deaths of three of them in 1769. Her own death in 1812. "The notice of Martha's death in a
local paper summed up her life in just one sentence: "Died in Augusta, Mrs. Martha, consort of Mr.
Ephraim Ballard, aged 77 years." 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."
--from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale
(1998) |

An innovative dramatic film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning
story
of Martha Ballard, a midwife and mother living in the wilds
of
Maine during the chaotic decades following the American
Revolution.
In a sparsely written diary, Ballard recorded her daily
struggle
against poverty, disease, domestic abuse and social
turmoil.
Two hundred years later, her world is painstakingly
recreated
by a historian seeking to understand eighteenth
century
America through a woman's eyes. |

5 Minutes Bible Study - The
Midwife's Tale

Martha Ballard 1734 - 1812
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