Merchant

"Merchant" at this time usually meant an “overseas merchant,” aka, an importer/exporter.   

Philadelphia's Wharf

While your contacts in London are the big fish, you have your finger on the pulse of commerce.  As a merchant you need to be well informed at all times, or it could cost you a lot of money.  You follow politics, read a variety of newspapers, as well as frequenting the docks, favored taverns or coffee houses, all places where you might meet people and learn of important changes on the wind.  Taxes, tariffs, the Navigation Acts, and imperial wars are especially of interest you because they all impact your business.

You trade a number of commodities, although you might specialize in something in particular.  For example, if you specialize in the fur trade (furs were big for hats, coats, muffs), you are an intermediary between backwoodsman and Native Americans who obtain the furs (in exchange for guns, shot, and goods for themselves) and London merchants who buy your furs.  You might also have a shop where you sell goods, although increasingly, for bigger merchants, auctions to smaller merchants and shopkeepers is the way to go.

John Hancock was a merchant of Boston.

While you might be a woman, it is more likely that you are a man.  You might be English or, even more likely, Scottish, or perhaps Dutch.  You may well be a Quaker as Quakers were able to hook into a larger network of Quakers in other ports and succeed fabulously in trade.  Or you may even be Jewish for the same reason.

The question is, which city do you live in?  Boston, New York, Philadelphia?  Or perhaps Charleston or Baltimore?