Southern women constructed and participated in an informal market network of family and friends from within their own homes, and they relied on this network for information about enslaved wet nurses who might be available. The market was informal in the sense that it was contingent upon the circulation of wet nurses largely outside the brick-and-mortar slave market, and it did not usually involve the exchange of currency, although money did occasionally change hands. Rather, this informal market resembled other female-dominated systems of barter and exchange that characterized early American
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