Fans of Downton Abbey undoubtedly shed tears at the death of Sybil Crawley Branson after childbirth in the episode that aired on January 27. Sybil’s marriage to Tom Branson, the family chauffeur and an ardent Irishman, and their move to Ireland, had unsettled the family. When a pregnant Sybil and her husband were forced to leave that country because of Tom’s revolutionary activities, the couple returned to Downton Abbey in time for Sybil to give birth. Warnings by the family physician of symptoms of eclampsia were discounted by the obstetrician brought in by the Earl of Grantham. Although Sybil was delivered of a healthy girl she died soon after of seizures typical of eclampsia. A severe blow to all.

This sad event brought to mind the description recorded in her diary by Frances Baylor Hill of Hillsborough, Virginia, of the agony and eventual death after childbirth of her sister-in-law Polly Hill.

Fryday [ September] the 8 [1797]. Sister Hill had just had a little one and was very sick … her baby is a fine girl tho’ not so handsome as Thomas.
(Saturday) Sister Polly still continu’d to be very sick had a high fever all day ….
Monday. Sister Polly rather better in the morning … Aunt Hill sent for Mr. Hill & Doctor Williamson, they did not come till the evening & found her a great deal worse than they expect’d … she grew so much worse that they sent for Doctor Roberts …. They set up with her all night & gave her bark [quinine] ….
(Tuesday) she was sometimes better & then worse, the whole day kept changing … The Docts gave her bark & Laudanum which confus’d her head very much …
(Wednesday) Sister Polly was very ill all day ….
(Thursday) a little better in the morning, but Oh how soon the pleasing hope vanish’d into dispair of her ever geting well, she continu’d extreemly ill all day; toward the evening she seemed to be a little better, but in the night she grew worse again and Poor Dear creature kept growing worse & worse untill about 5 oclock, which was the hour of her departure. No mortal can describe the distressing scean that follow’d after every thing being done by two very eminent Doctors & haveing had the best of nursing, to see her expire! Oh how great the loss to her Dear & Affectionate Husband, as well as her tender relations.

Diary entries from In the Words of Women, pages 175-76.

The Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich was published in 1990 and won a Pultizer Prize. A splendid work, the result of years of painstaking research, it presents ten long transcribed passages from the “raw” diary entries of midwife Martha Ballard, one per chapter, each with an interpretive essay. The essays help flesh out the character of Ballard and give readers insight into the society and culture in which she lived and worked. Explaining her approach Ulrich writes: “Juxtaposing the raw diary and the interpretive essay … I have hoped to remind readers of the complexity and subjectivity of historical reconstruction, to give them some sense of both the affinity and the distance between history and source.” Wise words.

In researching materials for In the Words of Women my colleagues and I considered including some of Martha Ballard diary entries, but it seemed presumptuous of us given Ulrich’s extraordinary effort and the availability of her book. Besides, the raw entries tend to be short, repetitive, and “submerged” in what Ulrich called “the dense dailiness” of life. Here is an example dated August 16 1787.

At Mr Cowens. Put Mrs Claton to Bed with a son at 3pm. Came to Mr Kenadays to see his wife who has a sweling under her arm, Polly is mending. I returned as far as Mr. Pollards by water. Calld from there to Winthrop to Jeremy Richards wife in Travil [labor]. Arived about 9 o Clok Evin.

As you can see considerable space would have to be allotted to explain who the people were as well as the context, and we could not afford that luxury.

The reason that prompted this post is that I finally viewed the television documentary “A Midwife’s Tale” (1997), one in the PBS series the American Experience. Brilliantly done, it tells Ballad’s story through reenacted scenes, readings from her diary, and participation and commentary by Ulrich. In addition to acquainting viewers with Martha Ballard it demonstrates how a historian works, and how challenging and complex that work is. It is available from Netflix.

Ulrich’s book can be purchased from Amazon.

Some parents today do not want their children to receive certain vaccinations fearing they may cause conditions like autism. In eighteenth-century America there was controversy over smallpox inoculations. It’s true that there were at times debilitating effects. Abigail Adams explained the lapse in correspondence with her friend Mercy Otis Warren in 1777: “My eyes ever since the smallpox have been great sufferers. Writing puts them to great pain.” Warren replied that she too had problems: “weakness … feebleness of my limbs, and pains … sufficient to damp the vigor of thought and check … literary employments.”

Attitudes toward inoculation were mixed: some religious leaders considered it “a distrust of God’s overruling care;” some communities supported it, others passed laws against it. Mary Bartlett reported to her husband (a doctor who was in Philadelphia having just signed the Declaration of Independence) that hospitals were being set up in New Hampshire to inoculate people.

Kingstown July 13th 1776P. S. I fear the Small Pox will Spread universilly as boston is Shut up with it & People flocking in for innoculation; the Select men of portsmouth have Petitiond to the Committy of Safty now Setting in Exeter; for leave to fix an innoculating hospital in their metropolis for the Small Pox and liberty is accordingly granted and the inhabitance of Exeter intend to Petition for the Same libirty.

Mary Silliman described to her parents how her husband dealt with people intent upon preventing inoculation.

[Fairfield, Connecticut] April 11, 1777You know Mr. [Gold Selleck] Silliman is state attorney … he has frequently pressing desires sent him from the neighbouring Towns that he should do something about stoping Inoculation. Then he has to send Guards to collect the infected to one place and order to let none come in or go out with out liberty. But at Stratford they have been so unruly and dispers’d the Guard, he has been oblig’d at the desire of about 80 respectable inhabitants to issue out positive orders to desist and as the civil law could have no affect they should be punnish’d by Martial. This has had its desired effect. None that we know of has transgress’d since.

As the War shifted to the South, British promises of freedom attracted thousands of runaway slaves, both male and female, who performed many useful services. This population, however, soon became a liability to the British because of their susceptibility to smallpox. Thousands contracted the disease and were cruelly quarantined and left to die. Thomas Jefferson believed that of the 30,000 Virginia slaves that had joined the British “about 27,000 died of the small pox and camp fever.”

For comments and letters by women, see In the Words of Women, pages 177 and 179. The religious objection to inoculation and Jefferson’s estimate can be found on pages 36 and 133 respectively in Pox Americana, the Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775-82 by Elizabeth A Fenn (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), an excellent book on the subject.

Childhood diseases like mumps, measles, and whooping cough were serious but commonplace during the eighteenth century. Epidemics, occurring seemingly at random, were much more alarming. One of the most feared diseases was smallpox because of its relatively high mortality rate and the severe scarring that marked survivors. This acute contagious disease was especially devastating in America because its inhabitants were less likely to be immune to it than Europeans who had been exposed to it. Even with the isolation of individuals and the quarantine of ships, smallpox flared up every few years, especially in urban areas. Native Americans were particularly vulnerable. It has been claimed that the British, aware of the contagious nature of the disease, deliberately tried to infect the Indian population by distributing blankets which had been used by smallpox victims.

A method of protection against the disease called inoculation had been developed in the eighteenth century. It involved deliberately inducing a mild case of smallpox in a person, thereby conferring immunity against re-infection. In spite of its success, there was concern about its safety; indeed it was banned in some states and communities. Early on, George Washington had decided against inoculating his troops, but when large numbers of soldiers came down with the disease, he changed his mind and required new recruits who had not had the disease to be inoculated.

Lucy Flucker Knox, wife of General Henry Knox. decided that she and their daughter Lucy would be inoculated. From Brookline, Massachusetts, she wrote on April 31, 1777:

Join with me my love in humble gratitude to him who hath preserved your Lucy and her sweet baby; and thus far carried them thro the small pox—no persons was ever more highly favored than I have been since it came out—but before for three days I suffered exceedingly—I have more than two hundred of them twenty in my face which is four times as many as you bid me have but believe some of them will leave a mark—Lucy has but one—and has not had an ill hour with it—both hers and mine have turned and are drying away. …

I have no glass but from the feel of my face I am almost glad you do not see it. I don’t believe I should yet get one kiss and yet the Dr. tells me it is very becoming.

Eliza Yonge Wilkinson of Mount Royal, Yonge’s Island, South Carolina, was thankful that she was not too badly scarred by smallpox. She wrote on May 19, 1781:

I have just got the better of the small-pox, thanks be to God for the same. My face is finely ornamented, and my nose honored with thirteen spots. I must add, that I am pleased they will not pit, for as much as I revere the number*, I would not choose to have so conspicuous a mark. I intend, in a few days, to introduce my spotted face in Charlestown.
* Wilkinson is, of course, referring to the thirteen states.

Smallpox has been eradicated through the process of compulsory vaccination. The last case of the disease occurred in the world in 1978. The United States stopped vaccinating the general population in 1972, but continued to vaccinate military personnel until it was officially stopped in 1990.

The letters appear on page 177 of In the Words of Women. The image is from the World Health Organization and can be found HERE.

Worse than the recently discussed sources, which were at least created with some attention to historical accuracy, was an example of plagiarism my colleagues and I discovered. At the Connecticut Historical Society, we came across a transcription of a letter by Love Lawrence to her sister written in 1784:

My dear Sister/ I have been 16 days at sea and have not attempted to write a single letter … Tis said of Cato, the Roman censor, that one of the 3 things which he regreted during his Life, was going once by the Sea when he might have made his journey by land; I fancy the philosopher was not proof against that most disheartning, dispiriting malady sea sickness.

The letter was one of the Letters of an American Woman Sailing for England in 1784 Quaint Message from Love Lawrence, Daughter of an American Clergyman, who Left her Country to Marry a Loyalist whose Political Principles Were Opposed to the New Republic—An Interesting Glimpse of Life in The Journal of American History, 1909, Vol. 3, No. 3, pages 441-446, by Edith Willis Linn, who claimed to be Lawrence’s great-grand niece. We had no idea who Lawrence was and yet, besides the inconsistencies in the letter, why did the words sound vaguely familiar? Because they were by Abigail Smith Adams and were written to her sister! Love Lawrence was really Lovey Lawrence Adams, the wife of loyalist Joseph Adams, who had fled to England in 1777 where he was named Master Surgeon of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. She was traveling with her brother on the same ship as Abigail who described Lovey in her letter as “My namesake you know. She is a modest, pretty woman, and behaves very well.” Edith Linn, of course, carefully deleted these lines from her article.

Motto for scholars and researchers: Always check and double-check your facts. Do not assume others have done so.

For the Abigail Adams letter see In the Words of Women, pages 258-60. See also pages xiv and 341-42.