ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the parallel stories of the business and the personal lifecycle of the John Morice family, which can be traced through the corporation records of eighteenth-century Aberdeen. Aberdeen was a growing and prosperous town where the expanding urban economy helped to promote a more forward-looking attitude among the citizens. Tracing and interrogating business families among the middling sort offers a lens through which the operation of commercial communities like Aberdeen can be viewed and better understood. Piecing together an array of disparate records generates a picture of the Morice bakery business, which was clearly long-standing and central to the commercial area of Aberdeen. Many women managed to establish themselves in business using the tools at hand. Family business was a fundamental entrée for many businesswomen, a pattern that Morice, McGhie, and Trail utilised. Families demonstrate how commercial activities functioned and how they intertwined with political, religious, and social cultures of the town.
