"She Said She did not Know Money": Urban Women and Atlantic Markets in the Revolutionary Era

Abstract

Using court civil records and business documents, this paper argues that women in the urban ports of Charleston, South Carolina and Newport, Rhode Island, were central to an Atlantic service economy. The work of white and black women, who performed similar tasks for a wide range of customers, was driven by the people and goods circulating around the Atlantic Ocean in the late eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries. The Atlantic world's distinctive patterns created new possibilities and new vulnerabilities for women in the urban economy.