June 15 Ballard film event is fundraiser for memorial

AUGUSTA – The Mayor’s Committee for Martha Ballard, a city group planning a memorial celebrating the early American midwife and diarist, is organizing a June 15 presentation of the 1997 documentary film “A Midwife’s Tale,” at Le Club Calumet, 334 West River Road.
The 89-minute movie, which first appeared on PBS in 1998 as part of the “American Experience” film series, is based on Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812.”
There will be a 5:30 p.m. social hour with hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar, followed by a 7 p.m. live interview with Glee and Ruth Ballard, of Sidney, and their cousin Diane Dunn,of Newburgh, all direct descendants of Ballard. The film will follow.
Ballard, a native of Oxford, Mass., moved with her family to the Augusta area at the start of the American Revolution. Her 37-year diary records not only many of the births, illnesses and deaths in which she was involved as a caregiver, but also observations about the customs, conflicts and living conditions of her time.
The committee is planning design and construction of a permanent monument to Ballard. The film-showing is a fundraiser for the memorial, and also part of an effort to raise community awareness.
The committee’s members are Chairman Larry Fleury; the Ballard sisters; Earl Kingsbury, Augusta’s director of community services; Courtney Allen and Heather Pouliot, City Council members; Stephen Arbour, local historian; Rachel Merriam, of Hallowell; and Secretary Jamie Logan and Joseph Owen, representing the Kennebec Historical Society.
Tickets for the film showing event cost $30 each and are available online at www.marthaballard.com, or by arrangement with Fleury at 207-242-0540.