Ligaments: Everyday Connections of Colonial Economies

Conference Program

Thirteenth Annual Conference of the
Program in Early American Economy and Societ

Library Company of Philadelphia,
1314 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA

Thursday, October 24
5:00 – 5:45 5:45 – 6:00	Reception & Registration Welcoming remarks John C. Van Horne, Director, Library Company of Philadelphia Cathy Matson, Director, Program in Early American Economy and Society and Professor of History, University of Delaware
6:00 – 7:30	Cities on the Rim: Between Oceans and Interiors
	Session Moderator: Christian Koot, Towson University Emma Hart, St. Andrews University, UK “Rivers, Wharves, and Markets: The Political Economy of Freshwater Fishing In the British Atlantic City” Nancy Hagedorn, State University of New York, Fredonia “On the Waterfront: Early Philadelphia’s Maritime Infrastructure and the Sinews of Atlantic Exchange” Sheryllynne Haggerty, University of Nottingham, UK “The Atlantic as World River: Connecting Atlantic Port Cities, Or: The Disappearance of the Atlantic Ocean”
Friday, October 25
9:00 – 9:30	Registration and coffee
9:30 – 11:00	Commercial Go-Betweens: Captains, Pilots, Chapmen, Outfitters Session Moderator: Craig Hollander, Johns Hopkins University Randi Lewis Flaherty, University of Virginia “Connecting Merchants to Markets: The Role of Ship Captains in Atlantic Trade” Simon Finger, Reed College “‘A Greater Price for their Service than the Law Allows’: River Pilots and the Contest over Compensation in Colonial Shipping” Steven Pitt, University of Pittsburgh “Waterfront Negotiations and Networks: Merchants, Seafarers, and Outfitting Ships in Colonial Boston”
11:00 – 11:30	Break
11:30 – 1:00	Mitigating Risk, Making the Sale Session Moderator: Michelle Craig McDonald, Stockton College Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, University of California, Davis “Public Sales, Public Values: Auctions and the Early American Economy” Hannah Farber, University of California, Berkeley “The Minor Republics: Insurance Companies in Early American Political Life” Benjamin A. Hicklin, University of Michigan ”Quick Remittances Are the Very Essence of Trade”
1:00 – 2:30	Lunch on your own
2:30 – 4:00	Connective Urban Spaces: Shops, Markets, Streets Session Moderator: Wendy Woloson, Rutgers University–Camden Rob Gamble, Johns Hopkins University “Policing Commercial Mobility in Early Republican Baltimore and Philadelphia” Kate Egner, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation “'By Measures Taken of Men’: Clothing in William Carlin’s Alexandria, 1763-1781” Nancy Christie, University of Western Ontario “Merchant and Plebeian Commercial Knowledge in Montreal, 1760-1820”
4:00 – 4:30	Break
4:30 – 6:00	Economic Authority of Special Knowledge Session Moderator: Katherine Arner, Johns Hopkins University Susan Brandt, Temple University “'Getting into a Little Business’: Margaret Hill Morris and Women’s Medical Entrepreneurship in the American Revolution” Sara Damiano, Johns Hopkins University “Agents at Home: Wives and Attorneys in Eighteenth-Century Boston and Newport” Christine Walker, University of Michigan “Ladies of Diverse Trade: Free and Enslaved Jamaican Women in Britain’s Commercial Empire, 1700-1760”
6:00 – 7:00	Reception