Women’s Work: Labor and Delivery in a Changing World

By Maria Karasavidis

Childbirth in colonial America existed almost entirely in the domain of women, unlike today when it is not at all uncommon for men to be present at the birth of their children or working as doctors assisting women with labor. In the 18^th century, and for centuries prior, childbirth was a social event that brought women together to share both knowledge and companionship. Multiple women might be present during labor and birth. Following delivery, it was common for a mid-wife, neighbor woman, or servant to offer assistance to the new mother, allowing her a period of “lying-in” while she recovered. Catherine went through at least twelve pregnancies resulting in 15 births over the course of her lifetime. This high number of pregnancies by modern standards was not out of the ordinary during a time when the risk of infant mortality was staggeringly high, among other factors that may have influenced higher rates of pregnancy. Catherine herself lost seven of her 15 children before they reached the age of one.

One of the most comprehensive sources on late 18^th century midwifery in the northern colonies is the diary of Martha Ballard, a midwife practicing in her community of Hallowell, Maine from 1785 until her death in 1812. In her diary, Martha recorded attending to 816 births. This number was likely even higher when the number of births she attended during her training is considered.

As attested to in Martha Ballard’s diary, most laboring women were attended by female midwives, friends, and relatives. Judge Samuel Sewall of Massachusetts Bay recorded diary entries concerning his wife Hannah’s delivery of their children. Sewall mentioned the several women other than the midwife who he called to be with Hannah while in labor. For one birth, however, he wrote that Hannah, “Had not Women nor other preparations as usually, being wholly surpris’d, my wife expecting to have gone a Moneth longer.” Women being present at a birth was considered important to the process of labor, and their absence was relevant enough to remark upon.

On May 27th, 1670, Governor Francis Lovelace appointed Tryntie Melgers the first official midwife of Albany. The reason given for the need of such an appointment was less “skilful [sic] women” were apparently pretending to be midwives for profit, leaving the women of Albany with suboptimal care. Melgers, who had been in practice for 14 years at that point, had a reputation for excellent service. She aided non-wealthy women at no cost, and the wealthy for a fee.

The second official midwife of Albany, Tryntie Jans, was appointed by the governor in 1676, swearing an oath to never refuse service to anyone rich or poor. By the 1710s, several colonies, including New York, required licensing to practice midwifery, although it seems those practicing without a license went unpunished unless they acted unlawfully or immorally (such as concealing the birth of an illegitimate child or refusing care to the poor). The need to regulate those who practiced midwifery demonstrates a clear standard of natal care expected in the colonies by the 17th century. These women were seen as skilled professionals whose work was invaluable across socioeconomic lines.

There are not many specific references to childbirth in the Schuyler family in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, despite how much time the Schuyler women spent pregnant and giving birth. Most of what we know about childbirth in the Schuyler family must be taken from brief references in letters and inferences based on broader trends in colonial America.

Mrs. Philip John Schuyler (1762-1767).
Thomas McIlworth. The New York Historical.

    Catharine Schuyler was twenty years old when she gave birth to her first child, and forty-six when she gave birth to her last. She spent almost three decades of her life pregnant, having just given birth, or taking care of very young children. At this time, out of the myriad extant receipts detailing Philip Schuyler’s medical expenses, none have been identified that include payment of services rendered to a midwife or for any specific prenatal care for Catharine. Prior to the construction of the mansion, Catharine and Philip likely lived at Philip’s childhood home on the corner of State Street and North Pearl with his mother, Cornelia. It is possible Cornelia attended Catharine for her first six pregnancies, which took place at that home. It is also possible that the services of a midwife were employed by the Schuyler family, especially for births happening after the family moves to the mansion, but any records of this are not currently known to exist. It is also possible that an enslaved women acted as midwife to Catharine. A letter from 1776 refers to an enslaved woman named Jenny accompanying Catharine and her infant daughter Cornelia up to the family’s home in Saratoga, so it is possible that Jenny was in some way connected to the care of the Schuyler children, possibly even their births.

During the Revolutionary War, Catharine continued to have children. In December 1775, while Continental forces led by Brigadier General Richard Montgomery (under the command of Major General Philip Schuyler) attempted their assault on Quebec, Catherine gave birth to a healthy daughter, Cornelia. A few years later in 1778, Catharine gave birth to a son, Cortlandt. Cortlandt did not survive infancy, passing only five months later from an unknown cause. From Philip Schuyler’s letters shortly after the birth, Catharine too was in danger. He wrote to George Washington on May 29^th, 1778: “Mrs. Schuyler has been extremely ill-As soon as she is out of Danger I propose to go and take up my Seat in Congress…” Catharine’s health appears to have recovered but the fear for her life suggests that this eleventh pregnancy posed a significant threat to her health.

A letter from Philip Schuyler to his son concerning his daughter Caty (1781-1837), gives insight into his relationship to the childbearing process. This letter poses a semantic challenge in that it is not clear if in reference to Caty’s breast not being well Schuyler means that she has been suffering more generally from some sort of respiratory illness or that she was experiencing difficulty feeding the baby due to a problem with her breast. Within the same sentence he references the growth of the baby being dependent upon the child receiving adequate nourishment, potentially drawing a relationship between Caty’s malady and its potential to affect the baby’s growth. Even with this area of uncertainty, it is clear Philip Schuyler was knowledgeable about his daughter’s post-natal condition and is interested in sharing this information with other members of the family, Catharine not only experienced the childbearing process with the births of her own children, but the births of her daughters’ children as well. Catherine and Philip had nearly 40 grandchildren.

When Catherine Schuyler gave birth to her youngest children from the years 1775-1781, she did so at a time of tremendous change for the practice of midwifery and the nation. The end of the 18^th century saw the shift from non-interventionist midwifery practiced by women, to a more medicalized childbirth practiced by male physicians. What was once the domain of highly skilled women who made use of herbal medicines and communal knowledge was slowly being overtaken by industrialization and qualifications that, by nature of the patriarchy, excluded women.

With this change, also came a shift in how women’s bodies were considered in the process of childbirth. Historically a process shared amongst female relatives, neighbors, and midwives, the idea of men being involved with the birthing process was scandalous to many, with one doctor referring to male midwifery as “a vast system of legalized prostitution”. The response to this by the male medical community was to completely remove the concept of female sexuality from medical texts to quell fears that women were getting sexual gratification from men that were not their husbands, or that man-midwives had ulterior motives in their care.

While medical texts from preceding centuries included frank references to female sexual pleasure starting at the turn of the 18^th century the female body in medical literature became almost entirely desexualized. Whereas medical texts in prior centuries included illustrations of women’s entire bodies, including references to pleasure derived from primary sex organs, the growing trend in the 18^th century was to illustrate women’s body parts disconnected from the rest of the body, as if detached from any sense of their belonging to a person. It was now commonplace to see just illustrations of the womb; without acknowledgment of the woman it belonged to.

William Buchans’ Domestic Medicine, a popular 1769 text with the aim of providing knowledge of medicine to a lay audience, furthered the idea that women were guided by gossip and superstition and were thus ill suited to assist in childbirth. He referred to the centuries long practice of multiple women assisting a laboring mother a “ridiculous custom”. He writes, “[women] hurt the patient with their noise; and often, by their untimely and impertinent advice, do much mischief.” This prioritizing of formalized (male) medical education over the traditionally accepted expertise of female midwives is a stark departure from the first English-language midwifery guide written in 1540, The Byrth of Mankinde by Thomas Raynalde, which begins with “a prologue to the women readers,” demonstrating that women were thought more than capable of practicing a standardized form of medical care, and could be the audience for medical education. Martha Ballard’s diary also shows that midwives’ knowledge was not limited to just obstetrics but included a vast array of medical knowledge. Martha recounts being called to assist in cases of farming injuries, rashes, coughs, and other injuries not seen as serious enough to require the summoning of the local physician.

Cartoon of a Man-Midwife.
Isaac Cruikshank 1793.
The British Museum. 

At a time when medical practice was technically simple (at least regarding the apparatus used), the barrier for women’s entry into the practice of medicine was significantly lower. Women could easily grow the herbs needed for treatments for all manner of ailments, and practical knowledge of their craft could be passed down from female relatives. Only when medical practice became more industrialized do we see it entering a more masculine realm, as men were interested in regulating women out of the spaces they had occupied for centuries. Women were excluded from holding the professional title of doctor, denying their status as practitioners in most official records.

Moving into the mid-18th to 19th century, social attitudes around childbirth started to change as well. Conceptions of motherhood moved away from the physical labor done by a woman’s body and towards the ideal of “sentimental motherhood,” where being a mother was removed from the physical process a woman’s body went through and instead focused on her role as the nurturer of the ideal future citizen. This idealized motherhood was reserved for upper class white women like Catharine Schuyler and her daughters. Women of lower socioeconomic status or nonwhite women were still heavily associated with the physical labor of childbirth, with medical texts at the time claiming their “savage” bodies were more suited for labor of all kinds.

This view of non-elite, nonwhite women experiencing pain differently was a precursor to the developing field of gynecological medicine in the mid-19^th century. The rapid growth of this discipline in the United States is directly tied to the use of enslaved Black women as test subjects for new procedures, often with little regard for the safety, comfort, or privacy of these women. This belies a hypocrisy noted by Deidre Cooper Owens in her work, Medical Bondage. She writes that doctors simultaneously viewed Black women as biologically different to white women and yet still similar enough that what they learned by experimenting on Black women could then be safely applied to white women.

Black women’s role in the development of gynecological care was not restricted to the subject of medical experimentation, but extended to practicing medicine, as well. In 1794, a woman named Kate who was enslaved by George Washington on his Virginia plantation petitioned him to make her a midwife for other enslaved women, additionally requesting that she be paid for this service. Washington employed 15 midwives across the five farms of his plantation, these included both Black and white women as well as male physicians. Their positions as midwives gave them an increased amount of freedom of movement in comparison to other enslaved women. Enslaved men were more likely to have jobs that allowed them to leave their enslaver’s land and form connections with other enslaved people. Midwifery appears to have been a very singular way enslaved women to expand their networks outside of the places in which they were enslaved. In her diaries, Martha Ballard makes reference to a “negro woman doctor,” drawing attention to the existence of free women of color whose skills allowed them practice under the title of doctor in some sort of capacity, demonstrating other providers of medical care, like Martha Ballard, viewed them as adept enough to act under that title despite what was certainly a lack of any official medical training or licensing that was only available to white men in the United States in the 18^th century.

The women of the Schuyler family provide a look into the rapidly changing world of both the physical practice of labor and delivery, and the cultural mindset around motherhood. They also exemplify what child rearing looked like for wealthy women in the late 18^th to early 19^th centuries. Catharine Schuyler and her daughters would have had available to them the highest standard of medical care for the time, as well as the ability to either hire help for childcare, or rely on the labor of enslaved women to handle the care of children for them. Looking at the women of the Schuyler family only, however, would give an incomplete view of the way women of different races and social classes dealt not only with receiving medical care, but the larger social views of their bodies and how they related to the childbirth process. That is why it is vital to look into the records of non-elite women as well, in order to get a more comprehensive understanding of something that, in some way or another, effected women in all walks of life.