About Professor Laurel Thatcher
Ulrich
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is Phillips Professor of Early American History
and Director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American
History at Harvard University. Formerly a professor of American
history at the University of New Hampshire, she is the author of
The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (2001), Good Wives: Image and Reality
in the Lives of Women in Early New England, 1650-1750 (1982)
and numerous articles and essays on early American history.
She won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1991 for A Midwife’s
Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812.
Professor Ulrich was born in Sugar City, Idaho and raised in the
Rocky Mountain West. She received her B.A. from the University
of Utah in 1960, her M.A. from Simmons College in 1971, and her
Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire in 1980. During her
tenure as a MacArthur Fellow, she assisted in the film production
of a PBS documentary based on her book A Midwife’s Tale.
Her work is also featured on an award-winning Web site called
DoHistory.org. She and her husband, Gael Ulrich, are the parents
of five grown children.
Her major fields of interest are early American social history,
women's history, and material culture.
