John Test – Merchant

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.







Reference 1

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.



Reference 2

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.

Reference 3

John Test identified as Upland merchant in The Record of the Court at Upland, p. 146.




Reference 4

From the Record of the Courts of Chester County, Pennsylvania 1681 – 1697 (Philadelphia: Patterson and White, 1910), p. 366.