"Prepared to do Business with Many”: Elite Women’s Investment in Early National New York City

This project traces women’s participation in New York’s transition to market capitalism in the early republic, placing the growth of the city’s marketplace into dialogue with shifting legal and cultural inheritance patterns. It addresses the methods by which female members of the upper class invested their wealth—in real estate, stocks and bonds, and material objects—to safeguard financial security amid increasing restrictions on women’s ownership and property administration. This research is a portion of a larger project entitled “An Alliance of Ladies: Power, Public Affairs, and Gendered Constructions of the Upper Class in Early National New York City.”