Seeking opportunity in nineteenth-century Brooklyn, thousands of women opened small businesses. Concentrated in the fancy goods, millinery, and dressmaking trades, they sought out the best locations on the busiest of commercial streets in the city’s growing and dynamic economy. Most failed within several years, unable to get the requisite credit or attract the volume of business necessary to sustain themselves. A small number, however, remained in business for decades. This article examines the strategies utilized by those who succeeded, focusing on the importance of the geographic locations they chose, the partnerships they forged with friends and family, and the products they marketed to argue that running a successful business required entering into a variety of collaborations. Even so, this exercise in mapping reveals that few women succeeded in growing their businesses into major enterprises.
See "Obituary," Brooklyn Eagle, February 7, 1896, 4. Also see article in Brooklyn Eagle from September 24, 1893.
2.
Margaret Latimer, "Brooklyn," in The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. Kenneth Jackson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 149. There are very few contemporary or general histories of Brooklyn. For an older but comprehensive overview of Brooklyn history up to the late nineteenth century, see Henry Stiles, History of the City of Brooklyn (Brooklyn, NY, 1870) and The Civil, Political, Professional and Ecclesiastical History, and Commercial and Industrial Record of the Country of Kings and the City of Brooklyn, NY, from 1683 to 1884 (New York: Munsell, 1884).
3.
For histories of businesswomen that focus on particular cities or towns, see Susan Ingalls Lewis, "Female Entrepreneurs in Albany, 1840-1885," Business and Economic History 21 (1992): 65-73; Robyn Mundy, "Norfolk Businesswomen during the Civil War Era," International Social Science Review 73 (1998): 75-91; John N. Ingham, "Patterns of African American Female Self-Employment and Entrepreneurship in Ten Southern Cities, 1880-1930," in Black Business and Economic Power, ed. A. Jalloh and T. Falola (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2002), 470-83; and Edith Eleanor Sparks, Capital Intentions: Female Proprietorship in San Francisco, 1850-1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Wendy Gamber’s The Female Economy: The Millinery and Dressmaking Trades, 1860-1930 (University of Illinois, 1997) primarily focuses on Boston, though she does make reference to other locations as well.
4.
In the nineteenth century business and financial success was a concept reserved for men. Jeffrey Decker argues that "success was traditionally built on the separation of genders, racial segregation and nativism." Ideologically, success might have been reserved for men, but practically this was something both men and women sought. Men went into business for themselves precisely because this allowed them to act as individuals or independent actors in the market. To build and sustain a business was seen as a marker of manhood. What business success meant for women was more complicated as dependence was seen by many as their natural state. Both Decker and Judy Hilkey suggest the successful businesswomen in the nineteenth century also risked being seen as masculine and less feminine. See Decker, Made in America: Self-Styled Success from Horatio Alger to Oprah Winfrey (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 133; and Judy Hilkey, Character Is Capital: Success Manuals in Gilded Age America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
5.
Angel Kwolek-Folland, Incorporating Women: A History of Women & Business in the United States (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 51. Kwolek-Folland argues that the legal and social changes taking place in the nineteenth century offered opportunities to women while noting that they "remained bound by older traditions" (55).
6.
The most obvious examples of this trend were women who entered into the hair care and related products businesses, such as those started by Madam C.J. Walker and Martha Matilda Harper, for example. For more on Walker and Harper and the franchising networks that were the foundation of their businesses, see A’Lelia Bundles, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker (New York: Washington Square Press, 2001); and Jane R. Plitt, Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000). For more on the beauty business and the opportunities women found there, see Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998).
7.
Lise Nelson and Joni Seager, "Introduction," in A Companion to Feminist Geography , ed. Lise Nelson and Joni Seager (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), 7.
8.
Sparks, CapitalIntentions, 5.
9.
Liz Bondi and Joyce Davidson, "Situating Gender," in A Companion to Feminist Geography , ed. Lise Nelson and Joni Seager (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), 19-20.
10.
Susan Hanson and Megan Blake, "Changing the Gender of Entrepreneurship ," in A Companion to Feminist Geography, ed. Lise Nelson and Joni Seager ( New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2005), 188.
11.
Smith’s Brooklyn Business Directory (W. H. Smith, 1857) and Whitten’s Business Directory of the City of Brooklyn: Including Brooklyn, Gowanus, Williamsburgh and Greenpoint (Brooklyn, 1867). While women could be found in many different types of businesses, the largest numbers were concentrated in these three main areas. Running boardinghouses was also a popular enterprise for women, but because they constitute a different kind of retail establishment, focused on providing a service rather than selling goods, they have been excluded from the survey.
12.
The 1857 Business Directory provided the full names of those listed, while the 1867 directory generally provided only an initial. Hence, of the 657 names in the 1857 directory, we can identify the gender of 647 individuals (78 percent female, 20 percent male), while we can positively identify the gender of only 217 of the 374 names in the 1867 directory (40 percent female, 18 percent male, and 42 percent unknown).
13.
See Gamber, Female Economy, and "A Precarious Independence: Milliners and Dressmakers in Boston, 1860-1890,"Journal of Women’s History4, no. 1 (Spring 1992 ): 60-88.
14.
This skew in the figures may also be a function of the Business Directory and the way in which entries were solicited. Not all businesses were listed in these directories, so these numbers probably represent fewer businesses than actually existed.
15.
A gender could not be assigned to five business owners. Until the early 1870s a distinction was made between Fulton Street and Fulton Avenue. Fulton Street ran from the East River up to Brooklyn City Hall, which was at the intersection of Fulton, Court, and Pierrepont, where it turned a slight corner. Thereafter it was referred to as Fulton Avenue. The numbering also changed and began anew at Fulton Avenue.
16.
An additional twenty-four pairs of individuals with the same last name appear but they have different first names and/or initials. What is not yet clear is whether in the twenty-four instances where a similar last name appears in 1857 and 1867, this indicates a family member continuing in the fields. In most of these cases the addresses do not match, nor is the trade listed exactly the same. In other words, one finds examples of two individuals with the same last name living on the same street, ten years apart, but one is listed as a milliner and the other is in fancy goods. More work in the census and R. G. Dun & Co. Collection records at the Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA (hereafter referred to as R. G. Dun & Co.), may reveal if there is a familial connection.
17.
Sarah Baker is not included as one of the forty who continue in business from 1857 to 1867 because I have not yet confirmed that these are the same people. There are two Sarah or S. Baker names found in the records.
18.
For a fuller examination of failure, see Scott Sandage, Born Losers: A History of Failure in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). In addition, Edward Balleisen’s work on bankruptcy reveals the ubiquity of failure. See Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina University Press, 2001). This concept of failure, however, is complicated. The R.D. Dun & Co. agents regularly noted storekeepers who had gone "out of business," "sold out," or "failed." People routinely failed in the nineteenth century, but this was seen as a temporary state, something an individual could recover from, and it did not carry the stigma it does today. To determine if the closing of a business was equivalent to failure leading to bankruptcy, one could try to match the names of businesswomen who went out of business with bankruptcy records. This article assumes that the closing (or selling) of a business constituted a form of failure.
19.
"Opening Day," Brooklyn Eagle, September 28, 1865, 2.
20.
"Opening of the Spring Fashions in Brooklyn," Brooklyn Eagle, March 29, 1861, 3.
21.
No doubt that the Brooklyn Eagle saw itself as an important organ of civic and economic development of Brooklyn, as certainly it reported on and championed the various commercial developments of city. But as evidence of how intertwined the various sectors were and how broad the experience of shopkeepers, fancy goods dealer John North, for example, had a long relationship with the Brooklyn Eagle, one that anticipated his business career. He had been the foreman in the composing room of the newspaper before opening his millinery shop, a fact fondly recalled in an article, "Recollections of John North," published in the Brooklyn Eagle on September 2, 1900, 20. While John’s wife, M. (nee Raynor), was acknowledged as the "style" behind the operation, John’s former employment with the newspaper may partially explain why his shop was regularly mentioned in surveys of the state of fashion in Brooklyn.
22.
"Millinery Openings," Brooklyn Eagle, October 13, 1873, 4.
23.
Even with this support, these businesses were hard to sustain. Mold was one of the longest lasting of businesswomen in this survey, from 1855 to 1886 (the last date R. G. Dun & Co. reported on her), but her "career" peaked in the late 1874 when she was reported to be worth between $8,000 and $10,000 and the owner of a farm in upstate New York, near Ellenville in the Catskill Mountains. In 1876 she suffered an illness from which she was slow to recover physically. This seems to have taken an even greater toll, as she was never able to fully recover her business either. From this time she seems to have been constantly in debt, relying on chattel mortgages and negotiating with creditors. She shifted locations as well, opening a shop in Manhattan in 1879 but then returning to Fulton Street in Brooklyn in 1881. To what extent she was hobbled by bad health, or the precarious economy of the late 1870s, or simply the changing nature of retail business cannot be determined. By 1886 she was found on Schemerhorn Street, off the main retail streets, in "no position for credit." For more on Mold, see New York, vol. 125, 389, R. G. Dun & Co. The Brooklyn Eagle noted her death as January 14, 1901, in Greenwich, Connecticut, aged 74.
24.
"Beatty Sisters Buried," Brooklyn Eagle, November 26, 1898, 14. Also see the U.S. Census, Kings County, New York, 1870.
25.
"Millinery Establishment," Brooklyn Eagle, June 26, 1857, 3. The records on North’s wife, M. (nee Raynor), are unclear. She may also have been doing business in her own name or may have had a sister, Mary Raynor, in the trade. The 1867 Whitten’s Business Directory lists a Mary Raynor, dressmaker, at 251 Fulton Street.
26.
Entry for Miss M. Raynor, New York, vol. 124, 274, R. G. Dun & Co.
27.
The numbered street addresses present a vexing issue. Buck was clearly further out on Fulton than many of her competitors, and it may be the R. G. Dun & Co. agent simply transposed numbers when he wrote down the street number (making 937 into 397). In the 1870s two-part Fulton (Fulton Street and Fulton Avenue) became just Fulton Street and the streets were renumbered. I make my arguments about the closing, moving, and opening of new shops on Fulton with some hesitation, as Fulton Street and Fulton Avenue are sometimes confused. Where possible I have tried to confirm the street number in several sources. However, in some cases, it may be that the owners were not physically relocating but that different numbering systems were being used.
28.
See credit ledger entries for Mrs. Maria Buck, New York, vol. 124, 190, R. G. Dun & Co. Also see U.S. Census, King’s County, New York, 1860, 1870, 1880 and U.S. Census, Cumberland, Maine, 1850.
29.
See entry for Maria O’Donnell., New York, vol. 130, 202, R. G. Dun & Co.
30.
See entries for Kate Liscombe (Liscum in the New York ledgers) and Orissa Lovely, Vermont, vol. 8, 164N, 185-86, and New York, vol. 135, 63, 304, R. G. Dun & Co.
31.
W. Farrell O’Gorman, "Demorest, Ellen Curtis," in American National Biography , ed. J. Garraty and M. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 419.
32.
For this information, see "The Real Estate Market," Brooklyn Eagle, June 17, 1902. John Lovely was not the most stable or successful businessman. In 1902 there was a warrant out for his arrest. He had been indicted for illegally selling stock in the Union Cooperative Building and Loan Association. See Brooklyn Eagle, July 26, 1902, and August 15, 1902; in a September 4, 1902, article his wife reported that he had gone out west.
33.
See entry for Mrs. Louisa Higham, New York, vol. 136, 43, R. G. Dun & Co. I have been unable to find Higham listed in either of the business directories used for this article. The R. G. Dun & Co. entries begin in 1870. However, the 1880 census shows that she was sharing a house or apartment with Joanne Santbrink. J. Santbrink appears in the 1867 Business Directory as running a fancy goods store on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, even though no mention of this is made by the census enumerator, who simply lists her as "keeping house." They were both widows by 1880, Santbrink the widow of a furnishings goods dealer. Higham’s husband, Captain James Higham, had apparently been engaged in the China tea trade. See U.S. Census, King’s County, New York, 1880; and the obituary, "Mrs. Louise Higham," Brooklyn Eagle, April 23, 1900, 8.
34.
There are clear instances where shopkeepers failed. The Brooklyn Eagle contains many small advertisements taken out by shopkeepers advertising to lease their space and sell their furnishings. Daniel Newcomb, for example, listed in the 1867 Whitten’s Business Directory as the owner of a fancy goods shop, in 1869 placed an ad in the Brooklyn Eagle announcing his intention to shut down his store and sell off all goods and furnishings.
35.
Moses King, King’s View of Brooklyn, (New York: M. King, 1904), 36-37.
36.
"A Millinery Industry," Brooklyn Eagle, December 2, 1888, 2.
37.
Lewis, "Female Entrepreneurs," 72. Lewis employs this term in her work on Albany. The $225 figure is quoted in ibid., 67. Certainly there were some women who owned businesses traditionally thought male, in manufacturing, for example, and who built them into major enterprises, but these were more likely inherited from fathers or husbands. For more on this subject see Virginia Drachman, Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
38.
Gamber uses this phrase to describe the precarious plight of milliners. See, e.g., Female Economy, 95.
39.
" A Millinery Industry," 2.
40.
Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23. Many of the observations made in this article parallel those of other historians of small business. These businesses are small, "single-unit enterprise," run by an owner who recruits her work force from among family or the local area and who is very much engaged in community affairs. For more on this, see Mansel G. Blackford’s "Small Business in America: A Historiographic Survey," Business History Review 65 (1991): 1-26. In her study of businesses in Poughkeepsie, New York, Mabel Newcomer found that most of the women in her survey were concentrated in dressmaking and that most men and women had little experience in the trade before opening their business and that the "only test of success available . . . is survival." See Mabel Newcomer, "The Little Businessman: A Study of Business Proprietors in Poughkeepsie, New York," Business History Review 35 (1961): 477-531. For an earlier examination of the precarious nature of small businesses in Poughkeepsie, see Ruth Gillette Hutchinson, Arthur R. Hutchinson, and Mabel Newcomer’s "A Study in Business Mortality: Length of Life of Business Enterprises in Poughkeepsie, New York, 1843-1936," American Economic Review 28 (1938): 497-514. Of businesses, 30 percent failed within the first year and less than half survived more than three years. E. Bruce Geelhoed, "Business and the American Family: A Local View," Indiana Social Studies Quarterly 33 (1980): 58-67, reiterates the important connection between family support and a successful business.
41.
For more information about the Demorests and their enterprises, see Ishbel Ross, Crusades and Crinolines: The Life and Times of Ellen Curtis Demorest and William Jennings Demorest (New York: Harper & Row, 1963); and Drachman , Enterprising Women, 48.
42.
R. G. Dun & Co. credit records suggest that Ellen and William Demorest together also took financial risks, speculating in real estate. William had failed in a dry goods business in 1850 before they married. After they married, Ellen claimed to be doing business independently of William. In 1862 she too failed, transferred her business to her sisters, but then she settled with her creditors, reclaimed her business, began publishing the Monthly Magazine, and by 1867 was said to be worth $20,000. At the same time, William was engaged in real estate speculation and Ellen used the dressmaking and publishing business to cover his debts. By 1875 they had remade themselves into credit-worthy business people. R. G. Dun & Co. ledgers list William as worth some $75,000 by 1876. After this, the ledger entries note that Madame Demorest no longer plays any role in the managing of the business. See entry for Madame Ellen L. Demorest, New York, vol. 216, 800a/3 and 800/D, R. G. Dun & Co., and entry for William Jennings Demorest, New York, vol. 436, 218 and 300, and 300ll and 300/H, R. G. Dun & Co.
43.
See entry for William Jennings Demorest, New York, vol. 436, 218 and 300/H, R. G. Dun & Co.
44.
See entry for Williams Jennings Demorest, New York, vol. 436, 300 and 300ll, R. G. Dun & Co.
45.
For a longer discussion of the ideological constraints which female entrepreneurs faced, see Susan Yohn’s "Crippled Capitalists: The Inscription of Economic Dependence and the Challenge of Female Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century America," Feminist Economics12, no. 1-2 ( 2006): 85-109.
