Abstract

"Subject to be drawn by Mary Hamilton: An Analysis of Women’s Transactions in the Records of the Wilmington Savings Fund Society, 1832-1853"

Amanda Gibson, University of Virginia (amandawgibson@gmail.com)

The Wilmington Savings Fund Society (WSFS) was organized in Wilmington, Delaware in 1831. The purpose of the Society followed that of similar savings fund societies and savings banks in the northeastern United States, Great Britain, and Germany; these institutions were meant to inspire thrift among working class populations. The rise of industrialization had created a working class who often lived on the edge of poverty in the best of times, and in the worst of times could starve. Social reformers envisioned the solution to these problems as encouraging the working class to live frugally and save during the good times, so that they had cash to carry them through down times. Savings fund societies and banks were also seen as a tool of economic and social mobility; the working class could save their wages today and later purchase a home or a farm in the western United States that would elevate them to the propertied class.
Scholars have shown that women were active members and customers of these institutions. Alter, Goldin, Rotella (1994) found that female depositors in the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society were primarily working as domestic servants. These girls and women were “life-cycle savers,” account owners who slowly saved small amounts over long amounts of time to create nest eggs for their later years. Similarly, data from the WSFS 1832-1846 Customer Ledger and the 1845-1853 Loan Books show that women, including women of color, made up a large percentage of the savers, but few of the borrowers. I am interested in what an analysis of these records can tell us about antebellum capitalism, gender, and race. If women’s participation as “savers” was an extension of their household and family roles, what can we understand about the delineation of the market and domestic spheres? And how did women’s inclusion as customers shape the institutions themselves?