Monday, January 28, 2019

In Business - Wives of Mariners

A Woman Shopkeeper of the 1790s, by an Unknown Artist.

A 1718 Pennsylvania law ordered that the wives of men who went to sea should be considered independent traders with legal rights in court. It was designed to protect women from unscrupulous and absent husbands.
The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, (July 1995), 181-202.