John Test is identified in the early records as a merchant (See below for a list of the references). That John Test was identified as a merchant means that he was not a shopkeeper, i.e., he did not operate a store selling items to the public at retail prices.
Seventeenth and eighteenth century English usage distinguishes between the terms merchant and shopkeeper. A merchant buys and sells with remote countries at wholesale prices. Daniel Defoe describes a merchant as one "who carried on foreign correspondences, importing the goods and growth of other countries and exporting the growth and manufacture of [the colony] to other countries." [From Daniel Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman (Oxford, 1841), I, 2. quoted in Virginia D. Harrington, The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution, (Gloucester, Mass: Pter Smith, 1964), p. 19]
Samuel Johnson's Dictionary serves as a well-respected guide:As with all subtle distinctions, common usage sometimes fails to recognize that two different words have a subtle but significant difference in meaning. In ordinary speech people frequently use terms that have different meanings interchangeably. But it is clear that when John Test is called a merchant he is not being a identified as a shopkeeper but as a someone who buys and sells goods with dealers in London.
March 6, 1677/78 John Test identified as a merchant in a transaction recorded in the Records of the Court of New Castle on Delaware 1676– 1681, p. 184.
John Test is identified as a merchant is in The Record of the Court at Upland dated March 12, 1677/78 indicating that Jonas Juriansen Kien sold land and housing to John Test Late of London merchant.
John Test identified as Upland merchant in The Record of the Court at Upland, p. 146.
From the Record of the Courts of Chester County, Pennsylvania 1681 – 1697 (Philadelphia: Patterson and White, 1910), p. 366.