"She Will Be in the Shop": Women's Sphere of Trade in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia and New York
"She Will Be in the Shop": Women's Sphere of Trade in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia and New York IN AN ADVERTISEMENT RUN IN THE Pennsylvania Gazette in December 1748 and January 1749, newly widowed Mary Coates urged all persons indebted to "Samuel Coates, shopkeeper, deceased" to pay their bills quickly. She added that she had "sundry sorts of merchants goods" belonging to the estate "to be sold cheap, for ready money . . . she being determined to settle the affairs thereof with expedition." For the next two decades, she continued to run the shop established by her spouse, selling, as he had, cloth and a variety of other wares. She traded with merchants involved in the distribution of imported manufactures and colonial purchasers engaged in their acquisition. After Mary Coates's death, her daughters continued to run the business. This brief example of a woman shopkeeper's business history draws attention to several key features of colonial commerce and women's