Abstract

"“God grant he may succeed, & make good use of his property:” The Circulation of Capital and the Limits of Affection in Elite Antebellum Families"

Lindsay Keiter, Penn State Altoona (lmk227@psu.edu)

This paper explores how elite families fused financial and affection in webs of circulating capital. Women as well as men invested in the business endeavors of kin, loaned goods and money, and performed services on behalf of parents, children, siblings, and cousins by blood and marriage. Yet aid, unlike affection, had its limits. In this paper, I argue that individual marital households eventually withheld financial aid to chronically indebted relatives, even children, as Alice Delancey Izard chose to do in 1816. Writing to one daughter about another, she lamented, “Her lot is a hard one,” having married a financially inept man, “but she brought it on herself & does not repine; at least she does not appear to do so.” Parents and other kin shifted to non-fungible forms of assistance out of immediate and longer-term concerns: that they keep enough wealth readily available should they themselves face an emergency, and to eventually be able to distribute wealth equitably among their offspring. In essence, they limited funds to particular members in the interest of the larger family.