“Miss Fan can tun her han!” Female traders in eighteenth-century British-American Atlantic port cities

Abstract

She washi off an scrubi off, she

Dragi dunga gate,

She stock it our wid half her lunch

An start fe speculate!

Miss Fan described in the quote above epitomises the tenacity and versatility of women in the early-modern Atlantic world. Lack of access to capital meant that women often had to be extremely entrepreneurial in their approaches to commerce. Half her lunch represents that small capital, but with hard work, women could manage to speculate successfully. This article investigates the trading opportunities available to women in three Atlantic port cities: Philadelphia, Charleston and Kingston. Port cities presented women with particular opportunities and problems with regards to work and income opportunities because their economies were based far more on commerce than other activities. There is no doubt that despite the hindrances placed in their way, these women made significant contributions to the economies of each port. Taking a comparative perspective highlights not only the similar problems faced by female traders throughout early-modern British America, but also the way in which factors such as the wider economy, race, the law and gender constructs shaped their abilities to contribute to the economy. The ability of these women to work within these constructs and to stretch their boundaries, whether white or black, free or slave, and whether by choice or necessity, is amazing.

Keywords:

• Atlantic
• women
• trade
• Philadelphia
• Kingston
• Charleston

Acknowledgements

This paper is derived from a project called “Transatlantic Connections: Merchants and Merchandising in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica” with Ken Morgan and Trevor Burnard funded by Leverhulme 2002–2004. The author should like to thank Trevor Burnard for his comments. An extended version of this paper was presented at the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500–1825, Harvard University in 2005. I would like to thank the participants for their comments. Any errors are, of course, all mine.

Notes

1. “Tun Yuh Han,” verse in Bennett, Anancy Stories and Dialect Verse, 82.

2. For women in New England ports see Crane, Ebb Tide in New England.

3. Warner, The Private City, 100–1.

4. Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream, 11; Clark, Jamaica in Maps, 21.

5. It also took time for economies to develop post independence. Haggerty, “The Structure of the Philadelphia Trading Community,” 171–92.

6. Burt, Philadelphia, 8–11.

7. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House, 20–8 and chapter two.

8. People of English origin still accounted for 29 per cent of the population in the South East of the colony (which included Philadelphia) in 1790. Other nations were represented as follows: Scots and Scots-Irish, 18 per cent; German speaking, 40 per cent; Welsh, three per cent; and others, nine per cent. Lemon, The Best Poor Man's Country, 14.

9. Female servants comprised 17 per cent of the total in 1745, but 40 per cent by 1795. Salinger, “Artisans, Journeymen, and the Transformation of Labor in Late Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia,” 62–84, esp. 64–8.

10. This mixed farming meant that Pennsylvania was not an ‘ideal’ mercantilist colony.

11. Soderlund, “Black Women in Colonial Pennsylvania,” 73–92.

12. Nash, The Urban Crucible, 7 and 69–70; Smith, The “Lower Sort,” 43 and 193.

13. Coclanis, The Shadow of a Dream, chapters one and three.

14. Morgan, “Black Life in Eighteenth-Century Charleston,” 187–232. Coclanis puts the black population as between 50 and 60 per cent, being higher in the 1720s than in the 1730s. Coclanis, Shadow of a Dream, 11, 64, 67.

15. Burnard, “European Migration to Jamaica,” 769–96.

16. Jamaica was relatively diverse compared to other British West India islands. Shepherd, “Land, Labour and Social Status,” 153–78.

17. Burnard, “Gay and Agreeable Ladies”; Burnard, “Not a Place for Whites?,” 73–88; Burnard, “European Migration,” 772.

18. Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America, chapter three; Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England, 201–2 and 211–3.

19. Salmon, Women and the Law, 46–8.

20. See for example, 35 Geo III, Cap 10, Howard, The Laws of the British Colonies in the West.

21. McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves, 16.

22. Salmon, Women and the Law, chapters five and seven; Anzilotti, “Autonony and the Female Planter in Colonial South Carolina,” 239–68; Shammas, “Early American Women and Control Over Capital,” 134–54.

23. See the example of Phibbah in Beckles, Centering Women, chapter three.

24. See for example, Ulrich, Good Wives; Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism.

25. See Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects.

26. See Soderlund, “Women's Authority in Pennsylvania and New Jersey Quaker Meetings,” 722–49.

27. Beckles, Centering Women, chapter nine; McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves, chapter one.

28. See Price, “Economic Function and the Growth of American Port Towns in the Eighteenth Century;” Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise; Hancock, Citizens of the World.

29. For a good case study of a female trader see Cleary, Elizabeth Murray.

30. Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, 21 Sep 1774.

31. Rogers, The Papers of Henry Laurens (hereafter HLP), 90.

32. Henry Laurens to Katharine Lind and Sarah Minors, 28 Dec 1771, HLP, Vol. 8, 132.

33. South Carolina Gazette, 19 Jan 1759, 1 Oct 1763.

34. Loven, “Hyrne Family Letters, 1699–1757,” 27–46, especially 35.

35. HLP, Vol. 4, p. 423. All amounts of money are in sterling unless otherwise noted.

36. Edgar v Leslie, C140/22/2 (1-11) Public Record Office at the National Archives (hereafter TNA).

37. The Royal Gazette, Supplement, 7 April 1781.

38. The Jamaica Gazette, 23 Aug 1788.

39. See for example the Case and Southworth Journals and Sales Books at Liverpool Record Office (hereafter LRO).

40. Shopkeepers were ideally supposed to be men, whilst shoppers were supposed to be women. Reality as always diverts from such ‘ideals.’ See Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, chapters “tea” and “shops and shoppers.”

41. For a comparative analysis of the number of female traders in Philadelphia and Liverpool see Haggerty, The British-Atlantic Trading Community, chapter three.

42. Philadelphia Trade Directory, 1785.

43. Margaret Moulder Ledger 1794-1799, passim, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter HSP).

44. Philadelphia Federal Tax List for 1783 (not Southwark and Northern Liberties), Pennsylvania Archives, 3rd Ser., Number 16; Philadelphia Trade Directory for 1805.

45. Mifflin and Massey Ledger 1760-1763, f. 43, HSP.

46. Mifflin and Massey Ledger 1760-1763, f. 43, HSP., f. 46.

47. Soderlund, “Black Women in Colonial Philadelphia,” 83.

48. Haggerty, British-Atlantic Trading Community, chapter five.

49. Sellers, Charleston Business on the Eve of the American Revolution, 81.

50. William Burrows to ?, 27 Feb 1781, PRO 30/11/105/4, TNA.

51. For example, Laurens to John and Thomas Tipping, 15 Dec 1763; Laurens to John Knight, 22 Dec 1763, Laurens to Meyler and Hall, 22 Dec 1763, HLP, Vol. 4, pp. 84, 95, 100.

52. South Carolina Gazette; 17 Nov 1759, 1 Oct 1763, 12 May 1759.

53. HLP, Vol. 4, pp. 206-207.

54. Case and Southworth Jamaica Sales Book 1754–1761, LRO.

55. The Pennsylvania Gazette, 31 Dec 1754.

56. Kowaleski-Wallace, Consuming Subjects, chapters “tea” and “shops and shoppers.”

57. The Royal Gazette, Supplement, 17 Feb 1781; Kowaleski-Wallance, Consuming Subjects, chapter “tea.”

58. Brathwaite, The Development of Creole Society in Jamaica, 40; Burnard, “Not a Place for Whites?,” 75–6.

59. Smith(excerpt from James Mease, The Picture of Philadelphia, 1811), in Smith, Life in Early Philadelphia, 23–6.

60. Hucksters are still an important part of life in Jamaica today. Beckles, Centering Woman, 190–1.

61. Philadelphia Trade Directories, 1785, 1791, 1805.

62. For more on pedlars, hucksters and higglers see Fontaine, History of Pedlars in Europe; and Jaffee, “Peddlers of Progress and the Transformation of the Rural North,” 511–35.

63. Sellers, Charleston Business, 107.

64. Regrating is buying up goods from others and reselling them for their own profit; engrossing is buying up stock in order to push up the price.

65. Olwell, “ ‘Loose, Idle and Disorderly,’” 97–110.

66. Quoted in Sellers, Charleston Business, 107.

67. This system also gave the slave a sense of freedom, but also linked him strongly to the land. Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery, 250–60; McDonald, Economy and Material Culture, chapter one.

68. James White to Bishop Gibson, Vere, 23 April 1724, Fulham Papers, Vol. XVII (i), ff. 185–88, Lambeth Palace Library.

69. Simmonds, “The Afro-Jamaican and the Internal Marketing System,” 177, 274–90.

70. It has been argued that the domination of black women in petty marketing in the Americas was a transference of cultural norms from Africa. See Gould, “Urban Slavery-Urban Freedom,” 298–314, especially 303.

71. The Jamaica Gazette, 23 Aug 1788.

72. James White to Bishop Gibson, Kingston, Jamaica, 5 Mar 1742/3, Fulham Papers, Vol. XVII (i), ff. 173–174, Lambeth Palace Library.

73. The Jamaica Gazette, 23 Aug 1788.

74. Olwell, “ ‘Loose, Idle and Disorderly,’ ” 101; Quoted in Sellers, Charleston Business, 106.

75. Inventory of Elizabeth Roach, Jamaica Archives, 1B /11/3/16, f. 47.