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.

尽管在理解女性在早期现代商业中的作用方面取得了重大进展，但还需要做更多的工作才能充分理解女性对 18 世纪贸易网络的影响。此外，人们对 18 世纪大西洋经济中更广泛的家庭成员，尤其是儿童的作用知之甚少。在商业历史中享有特权的正式文件并不能说明全部情况，它经常将商业活动描述为一种由处于贸易网络中心的族长主导的追求。本文通过广泛使用在北大西洋不同地区生活和贸易的三个商人家庭的个人家庭信件，探讨了 18 世纪的家族商业网络：巴巴多斯的商人兼海军部副法官休·霍尔；布莱克一家，他们是波尔多的酒商；约瑟夫·辛姆森 (Joseph Symson) 是来自英国肯德尔 (Kendal) 的服装商兼店主。本文将表明，女性似乎是自主参与者，有能力做出明智和独立的决定，从而指导其家庭的商业利益。此外，它还包括对商人培养大家庭专业知识以增强商业网络和推进商业追求的方式的评估。本文着眼于支持或促进家族企业繁荣的儿童，强调他们的参与是有意的，而不是偶然的。本文提出了有关此类活动的情感后果（很少详细考虑）以及以这种方式进行操作的经济利益的问题。