New statue in Augusta will honor Maine's most famous midwife

A 12-foot-tall statue honoring Maine's most famous midwife, Martha Ballard, is in the works and is scheduled to be unveiled in October.

Larry Fleury, chairman of a committee created in Augusta to honor Ballard, said he and others spent more than three years planning and fundraising for the project.

Ultimately, they raised about $80,000 in cash and in-kind donations to fund a monument honoring Ballard, who delivered more than 800 babies in towns along the Kennebec River in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Fleury said the city has long had plans to honor Ballard at Mill Park, which is located on the riverfront north of downtown.

“Martha did something incredible that no other woman was doing at the time: she wrote a daily diary,” Fleury said. “For nearly 30 years, she wrote something every day about her life and her job as a midwife in Augusta.”

Ballard's story became widely known after the publication of A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in 1990. The book is based on Ballard's diary entries from 1785 to 1812.

And while Ulrich contextualizes the entries using other historical data and research, she also includes many of the diary entries themselves.

In the introduction, Ulrich explains that Ballard rarely used punctuation and, like other diarists of the late 18th century, “used capital letters arbitrarily, abbreviated freely, and even spelled proper names at will.”

Here is an excerpt from May 1809: “I was called by Mr. Caton at 2:30 this morning to see his wife. I arrived there at sunrise. Found her giving birth to her son, her eleventh child, but not safe. I did what was necessary and left her as contented as could be expected. Arrived home before ten and sent herbs and other things.”

Between 1785 and 1812, she delivered 816 babies by crossing the Kennebec River in a canoe or by riding to the homes of expectant parents on horseback. She describes how her cloak once came too close to a fire “so that it was no longer wearable,” and she also describes everyday tasks such as knitting.

Ulrich writes that Ballard also made doctor's visits, helped prepare bodies for burial, distributed medicine, and cared for her own family. She gave birth to nine children in 16 years, three of whom died of diphtheria.

“To put it in 20th-century terms, she was simultaneously a midwife, nurse, doctor, undertaker, pharmacist and attentive wife,” Ulrich wrote. “Moreover, by recording her work, she became the custodian of civil registers, the chronicler of her city's medical history.”

As for honoring Ballard, Fleury said there are no photos or paintings of her, so she believes the statue will be her likeness.

“It will give you a feeling, but it will also be very whimsical,” he said. “It will be 12 feet tall and made of bent aluminum. The floor will be a trellis for grape vines. The grape vines will represent the life that brought them into the world.”

In a recent update to the Augusta City Council, Fleury said the statue should be unveiled in mid- to late October.

City Councilwoman Stephanie Sienkiewicz said she is excited about what the new statue will bring to the city.

“This history is so important to our city and to the history of midwifery in general,” she said. “I'm also really excited to see more artwork in downtown Augusta. I vividly remember places in the world where sculptures have impressed me and feel this emotional pull to this place. Enriching Augusta with things like this is a real gift to our community.”