Trouble Is Everywhere

George and I, Richard, Frank and Louisa Russell, Sally Burogyne, and Francis Price went up to Mr Walkers to try a cause between Philip Keddy and the 4 mentioned lads. We got but little satisfaction, however to the best of my knowledge there was nothing proved against Goerge and I but Richard and Francis Russell were found guilty, Lousia and Sally gave a clear good evidence, but Francis Price stammered a good deal, it is not quite settled yet but It hink no one will be fined. When we left Mr walkers the snow snow had turned to rain and made the walking very bad It rained and blew very hard. When we got to Murphy's we went in to warm ourselves and had something to eat then we came home and had a drop to drink. Lousia staid here all night.

Which of the following do you have:

Is it history to spend an hour and a half colouring in a map?

If I texteded you at 10 p.m. to ask if you had pencil crayons, what would you say?

Obligatory Melle Question

Q: Where did you begin?

A: I began by counting things. The very thing that had attracted me to the diary in the first place was also the thing that made it difficult to work with. I mean there's just so much. The diary is a long accumulation of workaday entries. And so I had to find some way to get control of the information so that I could find patterns in it. I hit upon the idea of making up a little form, kind of a data collection form. (And this was in the days before personal computers). And I would go day by day for every other year of the diary, and I would tick off what was in each entry: baking or brewing, spinning or washing, or trading, sewing, mending, deliveries, general medical accounts, going to church, visitors, people coming for meals, etc. Using these sheets, I was able to count the incidence of virtually every activity mentioned in the diary. To keep my sanity, I used those data sheets for the even numbered years, and took more traditional qualitative notes for those in between. I took down more information than I ever thought I needed. In graduate school, I was taught not to go on impressions, but to try to be systematic, and it really bore fruit.

With the data sheets, I could monitor Martha's days at home, her days away, and the days she went to church. And I would summarize the information at the end of each year. In 1792, for example, she was at home 192 days, but on ninety-two of those days she was at home, she had company. I never would have been able to figure that out without my data sheets. But by going back I could do that for ten or fifteen years, and then when there was a change, sometimes an abrupt change in her life, I began to look -- and try to understand why. So the counting was tedious and it was difficult. But it gave me patterns, it gave me the structure of her life and it gave me a framework for interpretation.


Q: Were there surprises?

A: Yes. When I began to tally up my check marks, it was soon obvious to me that some entries in the diary (like church-going, births, or records of visitors) were very systematic and that others were erratic, seemingly random. The entries for laundry were especially puzzling! Could it be true that the Ballards had clean clothes four times in June of 1796, but that they had clean clothes only once in the three months of April, May and June of 1792? I set the problem aside and began the laborious task of identifying the helpers in Martha Ballard's household between 1784 and 1800. Suddenly the pattern fell into place. It was clear that Martha mentioned laundry more when SHE had to do it! She was less likely to mention laundry when someone else was around to do it.

And Martha's seemingly trivial struggles with washday helped me to unlock an important theme in the history of the northern rural economy -- the waxing and waning of household labor. When Martha had teenage girls at home who could do the wash, milk the cow, and prepare the food for the men, she was able to develop her midwifery practice to its capacity. But when the last of her daughters married, her life -- and her diary -- changed.