Despite significant developments in understanding the role of women in early-modern business, more is needed to fully understand women’s impact on eighteenth-century trading networks. Further, much less is known about the role of wider family members, especially children, in the eighteenth-century Atlantic economy. The formal documentation that is privileged in business histories does not tell the whole story, and it frequently represents mercantile activity as a pursuit dominated by a patriarch at the center of a trading network. This article explores eighteenth-century familial commercial networks through extensive use of the personal family correspondence of three merchant families who lived and traded within different locales of the northern Atlantic: Hugh Hall, a merchant and vice judge of the admiralty in Barbados; the Black family, who were wine merchants in Bordeaux; and Joseph Symson, a mercer and shopkeeper from Kendal, England. This article will show that women appear as autonomous players with the power and ability to make informed and independent decisions that directed the business interests of their families. Moreover, it includes an assessment of the ways in which merchants cultivated the expertise of their extended families to enhance their commercial networks and advance their business pursuits. Focusing on children who supported or enhanced the prosperity of the family firm, this article emphasizes that their participation was intentional, not incidental. This article asks questions about the emotional consequences of such activity—which have rarely been considered in any detail—as well as the financial benefit of operating in this manner.

尽管在理解妇女在早期现代商业中的作用方面取得了重大进展，但要充分了解妇女对18世纪贸易网络的影响，还需要做更多的工作。此外，人们对广泛的家庭成员，特别是儿童在18世纪大西洋经济中所起的作用知之甚少。在商业历史中享有特权的正式文件并不能说明全部情况，它通常代表商业活动，是由交易网络中心的族长主导的一种追求。本文通过广泛利用在北大西洋不同地区生活和交易的三个商人家庭的私人家庭往来，探索18世纪的家族商业网络：休巴·霍尔，巴巴多斯海军部商人兼副法官；黑人家庭 谁是波尔多的葡萄酒商人？约瑟夫·西姆森（Joseph Symson），来自英国肯德尔（Kendal）的商人和商店老板。本文将显示女性作为自主参与者表现出来，有能力和能力做出明智且独立的决定，指导其家庭的商业利益。此外，它包括对商人如何培养大家庭的专门知识以增强其商业网络和促进其商业追求的评估。本文关注支持或增强家族企业繁荣的孩子，强调他们的参与是有意的，而不是偶然的。本文询问有关此类活动的情感后果的问题（很少详细考虑）以及以这种方式进行操作所带来的经济利益。