Brian JM Quinn, Boston College Law School, has posted Economic Lives of Women: Shareholding by Women in the Middlesex Canal Corporation, 1793-1859:
This Article explores the participation of women as shareholders in early American corporations, focusing on the Middlesex Canal Corporation. Corporate records reveal that many women, including many women in elite economic and political circles, became shareholders of the Canal Corporation. During the early Republic, the corporate form, as well as corporate equity securities, were still relatively uncommon. The Middlesex Canal Corporation was one of the earliest, and most high-profile, business corporations at the time of its incorporation in 1793. With the subsequent development of the modern corporate form came the proliferation of corporate equity securities. The creation of corporate equity securities generated passive income earning opportunities that permitted elite women to remain economically active and independent in ways that were previously impossible. Thus, the Middlesex Canal Corporation marks an important, but understated, milestone in the economic lives of women in the United States. This Article uses historical corporate records to tell the stories of the first women shareholders of the Middlesex Canal Corporation and the beginnings of financialization of the American economy.
Middlesex Canal (LC)
--Dan Ernst
