Date Thesis Awarded
4-2024
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Open Access
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
History
Advisor
Sarah E. McCartney
Committee Members
Nicole Dressler
Peter McHenry
Abstract
This thesis uses the business records of Ninian Boog, who operated a store in Walkerton, King and Queen County, Virginia, from 1748-1753, to highlight a variety of consumer networks connecting King and Queen County’s residents to each other and to the larger Atlantic World. Analysis of these networks draws a connection between studies of consumer activity in colonial port cities and the backcountry, with Walkerton representing a middle ground between these two types of consumer experiences. As a factor for Buchanan & Hamilton’s Scottish firm, Boog’s store integrated the region into the wider Atlantic World of merchant networks and consumer goods. Providing centralized location for exchange for the town of Walkerton, the store also served as an outlet specifically for enslaved people and women to exercise economic agency through both the consumption of goods and the sale of commodities. With these opportunities and connections to the Atlantic World, this thesis argues for a greater integration of King and Queen County into our understanding of Virginia history.
Recommended Citation
Weaver, Cecilia, "Consumers, Commodities, and Connections: King and Queen County, Virginia as a Window to the Eighteenth-Century Commercial Marketplace" (2024). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 2151.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/2151
