Far from being "trivial and unimportant," as one critic complained, Ballard's daily entries, in their dailiness, are an invaluable resource for the study of early American culture.
Born in Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1735, Martha Moore was the daughter of Dorothy and Elijah Moore. The family was relatively well educated: one of the sons was a Harvard graduate who became a librarian and pastor, and an uncle was a Yale-educated physician. Martha Moore married Ephraim Ballard--a surveyor, mapmaker, and miller--in 1754. In 1769, after six of their children were born, a diphtheria epidemic that swept through Oxford took the lives of three of their four daughters in fewer than ten days. By 1775 several of their relatives had settled on Maine lands owned by the Kennebec Proprietors, a wealthy Tory company. In that year Ephraim leased Fort Halifax and its surrounding lands in Winslow, Maine, from the company. The property was soon confiscated by the Revolutionary army, however, after complaints about Ephraim's unfriendliness to the patriot cause.
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