Colonial Topsfield
May 8, 2015 Presentation
Assistant History Professor at UMass Lowell, Dr. Abby Chandler presents the fascinating and little understood role of midwives in Colonial America. A midwife was among the five to eight women invited to attend a birth, serving not only as medical assistant, but also as legal representative in a society that closely scrutinized births for impropriety. Dr. Chandler discusses her extensive research of the training, professional and personal lives of many Essex County midwives, with particular emphasis on the life and work of Topsfield midwife Mary Curtis.
Dr. Chandler has kindly provided three transcriptions of the records of the 1720 trials in which Mary Curtis was required to testify. These are from the Essex County Court of General Sessions, Criminal Cases 1719-1722 held at the Massachusetts State Archives.
- Jane Gray for fornication, May 30, 1720 (Box 6)
- Mary Towne/Benjamin Towne, December 27, 1720 (Box 6)
Rev. Joseph Capen testified in this case himself. Here is the transcription:
“where his daughter Mary Town was fallen & lying sick of ye sickness where of soon after she died and being [unclear] I took occasion to discourse with her about great concerns with her soul what provision she had made for death if such an hour of change should be at hand as it proved to be so in deed what were her hopes of obtaining mercy with God in such an hour and what were the grounds of her hopes . . . I thought it proper for one in my circumstances (without playing ye busy body or invading of office of such as can be invested with Civil Authority) to question her . . . about what she had charged Benjamin Town of Topsfield withall as to being the father of that child whereof she had been a mother yet so if she had charged him normally she might retract or recall her charge and lay it to the right person and so she might not go out of the world under guilt lying on her conscience of doing wrong to any person whatsoever if she should now die of this sickness she must appear before a righteous and omificient judge who hath a perfect knowledge and understanding of all persons and things To which my question and conversations she readily replyed without any hesitation or demur that she had done no wrong to said Benjamin Town . . .for he was the father of her child and . . . and added that no person whatsoever had to do with her in that kind but he ye said Benjamin Town morever according to ye account I have that concerning her she was a person of very sober and good behavior in ye yes of all around her, not given to lying and blameless in her conversation only this matter . . . and for this offense of hers she laid it to heart execcedingly and seemed to be heartily grieved for her Roving.
- Experience Towne/Nathaniel Walles, April 12 1721 (Box 7)
Dr Chandler's paper, From Birthing Chamber to Court Room: The Medical and Legal Communities of the Colonial Essex County Midwife has been published in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring 2015.
From the Topsfield Town Library Staff
Reading Recommendations
- A Midwife's Tale:
The life of Martha Ballard,
Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 - Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
- Look it up online or at the library in [921 Ballard]
- Presents the life of Martha Ballard, a midwife in Maine during the eighteenth century, by drawing on the detailed diary she kept for twenty-seven years of her life .
Web Sources
- A brief history of midwives in Massachusetts.
- C.M. Kelleher, 2011
- From: Caring for Women: A Profile of the Midwifery Workforce in Massachusetts (p.8)
Recommendations from Dr. Abby Chandler
- The Healer’s Calling:
Women and Medicine in Early New England - Rebecca Tannenbaum, 2009
- Available through the Massachusetts Virtual Library Catalog. Ask a Topsfield Town Library Reference Librarian for assistance.
- Covers all aspects of medicine from surgery to the role of religion in healing, giving readers a comprehensive overall picture of medical practices from 1600 to 1800. An introductory chapter describes the ways in which all three cultures in colonial America--European, African, and Native American--thought about medicine. The work covers academic and scientific medicine as well as folk practices, women's role in healing, and the traditions of Native Americans and African Americans.
- The Art of Midwifery:
Early Modern Midwives in Europe - Hilary Marland, ed., 1993
- Available through the Massachusetts Virtual Library Catalog. Ask a Topsfield Town Library Reference Librarian for assistance.
- The Midwives of Seventeenth-Century London
- Doreen Evenden, 2000
- Ask a Topsfield Town Library Reference Librarian for assistance.
