Catharina Schrader

Friesland, Netherlands, 1693-1746

Catharina Schrader

Mother and Child Were Saved  is a memoir written by a Protestant midwife, Catharina Schrader, who lived in Germany during the 1600s. Catherina offers an important window into the daily lives and life cycles of non-elite women living in early modern Europe. She documented some 4000 births she attended.  Analysis of these records shows 95% of these births were spontaneous, without intervention. The corrected maternal mortality was 4.6/1000 and perinatal mortality 54/1000 births.

Schrader, C. G. (1987). Mother and Child Were Saved: The Memoirs (1693-1740) of the Frisian Midwife Catharina Schrader trans. and annotated by Hilary Marland, with introductory essays by MJ van Lieburg and GJ Kloosterman. Rodopi, Amsterdam.  An extract of the book can be found on Google Books.

Dunn, P. (2004). Catherina Schrader (1656–1746): the memoirs of a Friesian midwife. 

Catherina Schrader, a Dutch midwife practicing 300 years ago, left records of some 4000 deliveries, 95% of which were spontaneous without intervention. The corrected maternal mortality was 4.6/1000 and perinatal mortality 54/1000 births.

Beal, J. (2014). Catharina Schrader: A Midwife of 18th-Century Friesland. Midwifery Today, 110. 

Catharina Schrader, a midwife of Friesland (the northwest region of the Netherlands) practicing in the 1700s, had her doubts about the dignity of her calling. Socially, she was a member of the upper-middle class. She was the daughter of a tailor, yes, but her father served the royal court in Germany. Her first husband was a surgeon and after his death, she remarried and her second husband was not only a gold- and silversmith, but the mayor of their town. Why on earth was she serving as a homebirth midwife, at the beck and call of every nearby laboring mother at all hours of the day and night? She admits, “I thought that it [the work of midwifery] was … below my dignity.”

Wiesner-Hanks, M. Excerpt from Memoirs by Catharina Schrader,  Analyzing personal accounts, World History Commons  (On that site, click on ‘Text’ to see the excerpts).

This is a memoir written by a Protestant midwife, Catharina Schrader, who lived in Germany during the 1600s. It offers an important window into the daily lives and life cycles of non-elite women living in early modern Europe.

Rosina Heydrich

Schwenkfelder community, Lower Salford, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 1770-1819

Rosina Heydrich

An extensive midwifery manuscript  in the archive of the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center, this journal attributed to Rosina Heydrich, is a rare artefact of women’s work and medical practice in early America, covering 1775 to 1819.

It contains recipes and cures for ailments dealing with childbirth and also records the births of over 1,700 children.

Donmoyer, P. (2021). Deliver, ritual and discretion: Discovering the past in early Pennsylvania midwife’s register. Pennsylvania Heritage,Winter 2021.

Hoofbeats on the dirt path announced the arrival of the midwife, who traveled on horseback from her home at Lower Salford in Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County to attend a birth at the residence of the Haag family in nearby Franconia Township on August 1, 1770. Johannes Haag was the first delivery attended by Rosina (Krauss) Heydrich (1737–1828) when she began her Hebamme Büchlein, or midwife’s manuscript, at the age of 32. Over the next five decades, she and an anonymous assistant recorded 1,739 attended births in the Perkiomen Valley, along with detailed medical treatments and herbal remedies for a wide variety of health concerns for women and children. The extensive manuscript may be the earliest midwife’s birth register in America, providing the rare opportunity to closely examine the life and work of a leading female pioneer in early Pennsylvania.

Martha Ballard

Hallowell (Augusta) Maine, 1785-1812

Martha Ballard

Explore Martha Ballard’s Diary online

Explore the film A Midwife’s Tale, produced by Laurie Kahn-Leavitt and directed by Richard P. Rogers, which chronicles the interwoven stories of two remarkable women: eighteenth-century midwife and healer Martha Ballard; and the twentieth-century historian who brought her words to light, Laurel Thatcher Urlich.

Buy the book A Midwife’s Tale: The life of Martha Ballard, based on her diary 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Urlich

Beale, J. (2012). Martha Ballard – A midwife of Maine 1778-1812. Midwifery Today, Winter, pp34-35.

At 43 years of age and pregnant with her ninth and last child, Martha Ballard attended her first of 816 births as a midwife in Hallowell (later Augusta) and neighboring areas in Maine. It was a hot July in 1778, just two years after leaders of the Continental Congress – including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson – had issued the Declaration of Independence and begun the Revolutionary War. Martha and her husband, Ephraim, suspected of Tory sympathies, had left their home in Massachusetts and thus escaped the full fury of the British army that was unleashed first in that state at Boston, Lexington and Concord. As the new nation of the United States of America was slowly emerging on a tide of blood, Martha was emerging as a skilled midwife who kept women safe in childbirth and helped to bring new life into the world in peace.

Bloom, L. (1990). Midwife, mortician, physician, pharmacist. Belles Lettres, Arlington, 6:(1), p48.

A Midwife’s Tale [is] a superbly researched and elegantly written biography. Contemporary women scholars are committed to calling attention to the lives of ordinary women, who weave the fabric of daily life, transmitting its culture and values. Women, after all, comprise fifty-one percent of history but for centuries have been ignored by male scholars focusing on Great White Men. We realize now that everyone has story to tell, majority and minority, native-born and immigrant, old and young and middle-aged. So a historian like Ulrich can take the bare-bones diary of Ballard, a Revolutionary War midwife, provide an extensive cultural and historical context, and recreate a life both meaningful and memorable.