Marriage, Birth, and Inheritance: The Merchants of Eighteenth-Century Buenos Aires Open Access

Recent demographic studies on colonial Latin America have concentrated on studying populations at the macro or aggregate level. Using census material or other house lists, historians have been successful in describing general patterns of growth or decline, household composition, racial composition, and age structures.¹ These studies, while valuable in portraying population patterns, cannot generate information on finer questions of historical demography because of the very nature of the data. While a census can help us paint a descriptive picture of a population, it does not tell us about the demographic rates which produced a particular pattern. To determine rates of fertility, birth, and death, we must turn to data which record these specific events—either national registers or, for the colonial period, material collected at the parish level.

There have been few published reports of attempts to systematically use parish registers to reconstruct demographic patterns.² Problems of the sheer volume of the records involved, the tedious work involved in copying and organizing the material, incomplete records, the difficulty of tracing individual families, and missing registers are known to all historians who have attempted demographic historical research at the micro or family reconstitution level. Nevertheless, this method can be used profitably to understand more fully the demographic history of specific sectors of society. Characteristic of most historical documentation, the law of class selection is at work in parish archives; it is far easier to trace upper class individuals and to reconstitute families for them both because of the relative uniqueness of their last names and the tendency for the more socially prominent to register births, marriages, and deaths. This study presents the results of research on fertility patterns of one specific socioeconomic group in an attempt to demonstrate the feasibility of using family reconstruction techniques for colonial Latin American historical demography.

Fertility has been chosen as the focus of this study because one of the chief indicators of the success of a social group is its ability to perpetuate itself, biologically, socially, and economically, over several generations. This intergenerational perpetuation is conditioned by a series of factors (social mobility, economic conditions, educational opportunities), but two basic demographic factors are critical and should be considered before the influence of broader socioeconomic factors can be investigated: marriage rates and fertility patterns.

The wholesale merchants of eighteenth-century Buenos Aires comprise the social group under observation in this study—a group of great economic, political, and even religious importance in a fast developing area of the Spanish Bourbon empire.³ The merchants of Buenos Aires, composed mainly of Spaniards from the north and the Basque area with a strong component of native-born (or creole) members, controlled a trade which ranged from Paraguay to Potosí, from Santiago de Chile to San Juan, from Corrientes to Cordoba. Although the group varied in number from 130 to 220 members, due to fluctuations produced by the expansion and contraction of markets, by the late eighteenth century a sizeable group of wholesalers had settled in Buenos Aires and successfully engaged in commerce.

For purposes of this study, information on 178 men who identified themselves as merchants in public and private documents (wills, bills of sale, personal correspondence) was drawn from four censuses of the city of Buenos Aires.⁴ All of the men included in this group appeared in documents which spanned at least a five-year period; in this way resident merchants were weeded out from visiting merchants from Spain and the interior. Demographic information on the same individuals was then culled from local parish records and published genealogies; both of these sources allowed for at least partial family reconstitution of a total of 142 merchant families. Of these cases, complete information on the total number of children born to a couple (cases in which the death of the female spouse could be definitely documented) was found for 105 merchant couples, but only 96 cases contained extensive information on the family including the birth date of the mother, and of all her children, dates of the beginning and end of marriage, and total number of offspring. In all instances, those cases which provided complete information for the specific calculation to be carried out were used. The number of cases used for any one calculation varied therefore according to the type of information needed.

Obviously as one applies more exacting criteria to a set of cases in order to perform sophisticated demographic measurements, the number of cases is reduced. But even applying the most rigorous tests, more than half of the original sample was usable. Although the historian is forced to disregard many cases, I believe that historical demography can provide useful techniques and insights into the study of any well-documented social group.

The reliability and usability of the sources clearly determine the extent to which similar studies can be carried out for other groups in colonial Latin America. In the case of Buenos Aires, the parish records are generally reliable and in good condition when they exist, although they are not indexed. Some parish material has been destroyed, but the merchants and other high status groups generally belonged to centrally located parishes (La Merced, San Nicolás de Barí) which have been preserved. The published genealogical sources which were used to verify and complement the parish records are also of generally good quality, especially in providing birth dates and survival information on children.⁵ This material is, however, limited by the genealogists’ selection of families and by missing information on birth and death of spouses. Whenever a conflict was found between information contained in a published genealogy and that in the parish records, the latter was always accepted as more accurate. In general, birth information was better for the female rather than the male spouse, a reflection of the fact that most merchants’ wives were born in Buenos Aires, while the merchants themselves tended to be European-born.

Both census and parish information reveal that marriage was an important path to personal and economic success. In the 1778 census, for example, seventy-six percent of all men who listed their occupation as comerciante were married. Of those merchants not yet married by 1778, an additional twelve percent later married and settled in the city. Only two important merchants listed in the 1778 census never married. In general those men who failed to marry also failed to establish strong local roots and to remain active in the city’s commercial life.

Using age as the independent variable, a close correlation between age and marital status is evident. Among younger merchants, men below the age of thirty, seventy-four percent were not married, but of those merchants age thirty and over, eighty percent were married. Information from family reconstitution supports the picture presented by census data. Reconstitution of 142 merchant families shows the average (mean) age at first marriage for males (that is, merchants) to have been 30.94 years (standard deviation—6.54). The youngest merchant to marry was wed at age nineteen. The oldest merchant married at age fifty-two. The most common age (mode) for a Buenos Aires merchant to marry was twentyseven, and the median age was thirty.

More important than the merchants’ age at marriage in affecting demographic patterns was the age of the merchants’ wives. Here the difference is striking, for the mean age at marriage for a woman marrying a merchant was 18.76 years (standard deviation—3.73); the modal age was 15 years; and the median was 18. Four brides chosen by merchants were 13 years old at the time of their marriages; the two oldest brides were 29, well on their way to spinsterhood by the standards of their group and time. The average gap between the age of the bride and bridegroom was 12.1 years.

In addition to this disparity between male and female age at first marriage, family reconstitution displays another interesting characteristic of the porteño merchant group: a high degree of group endogamy. The vast majority of Buenos Aires merchants chose to marry the daughters of older, more established merchants, thus using marriage to strengthen previous commercial ties. Kinship, usually matrifocal kinship, was of primary importance in fostering group cohesion and cementing the merchant community together. Reviewing the family ties of those merchants present in the city in 1802, we find that fifty-three of the seventy-seven new merchants (those not in the city in 1778) were sons, sons-in-law, brothers-in-law, or nephews of established merchants. No merchant kinship ties existed for twenty-four members of the newcomer group, but it is interesting to note that only twelve of these men were still in Buenos Aires commerce four years later. Failure of a younger merchant to establish kinship ties with older merchants correlates closely with inability to become a permanent member of the commercial community.

The young age at marriage of merchant wives is, of course, critical in understanding their fertility patterns, for the number of years between menarche and menopause during which a woman is exposed to pregnancy, the number of years during which she is “at risk” to become pregnant, is one of the prime factors influencing fertility and family formation.

Before we consider how many children the average merchant couple had, a possible weakness in parish data should be mentioned. Because of the condition of some parish records and delays which were experienced between birth and baptism or between a priest’s performing a baptism and recording the event in his parish register, it is suspected that the family reconstitution data reflects an undercounting of births. Occasional long birth intervals also suggest missing children. Vague references to births appear in wills, but corresponding baptisms are not entered in parish registers, suggesting that many stillborn children were never baptized. “Hemos tenido muchos hijos de los cuales solamente 13 sobrevivieron reads the will of one merchant, but a search of parish records reveals the baptisms of only fourteen children, not the many more than thirteen implied in his testament.⁶ The net result of this suspected weakness in the data indicates that fertility rates were even higher than those discussed herein. In addition, the number of couples who bore no children is probably too high for their stillborn births would also tend to be underreported. In spite of these weaknesses, family reconstitution is valid in indicating the lowest possible levels of fertility.

Of a group of 105 families for whom we have complete information, the average number of children born per family was 7.38 (see Table I). It should be pointed out that 9.5 percent of these families had no children (a result of either male or female sterility) while 2.9 percent of the families had 16 children per family or more. The modal value, that is the most frequent number of children per family, excluding childless families, was 1 or 2; the median value for all families was 8 children. Although it is interesting to know the average number of children born per family, it is important to consider the effects of age of the women at marriage and whether or not the marriage lasted until the woman was past her childbearing years. Age of mother at marriage is a critical variable in all indices having to do with reproduction, for a woman’s ability to conceive and bear children is closely related to her biological age (see Table II). A woman marrying at a younger age will usually spend more of her biologically reproductive years within marriage. The “years at risk” to become pregnant are greater for a woman who marries at age 20 than one who marries at age 40, if both women live to age 45.

In the case of the Buenos Aires merchant group, information on the number of children born per marriage by the age of the woman at the time of marriage was tabulated in three different ways. For those families which were completed, (that is, for those families where the marriage lasted until the mother was age 45), the average number of children born per family was 9.79. For those families which were incomplete (that is, where the mother was either dead or widowed before age 45), the average number of children per family was 6.43. For all families the average number was 7.82. In addition, the age of the woman at marriage is an important variable in all three types of cases. In general, the younger the age at marriage, the larger number of children born to the woman. Women married between the ages of 15-19 who completed their fertility had an average of 11.2 children, while a woman who married between the ages of 25-29 had only 4.5 children.

Based on information derived from family reconstitution forms, we can calculate the number of years spent in marriage by a woman in any five-year age group (that is, the number of years during a five-year period that she was at risk to have a child) and the number of children actually born during that period. Controlling for the woman’s age at marriage, age-specific and average fertility rates are generated (see Table III). In the case of women married between the ages of 15-19 (fifty-three percent of all cases), initial high fertility in that age-group continued to increase steadily until the ages 25-29. Peak fertility was reached in this age-group (approximately one child every two years), and then dropped off markedly. The same pattern is seen in women married between ages 20-24, although here peak fertility occurred at a later age (ages 30-34) and never reached the same levels of women who married earlier. For the entire group, years 20 to 34 were high fertility years, approximating one of the highest human fertility rates known, that of the Hutterites.⁷

There are two remarkable features in the age-specific marital fertility rates of the porteño merchants’ wives. First is the rather steep overall decline of fertility for women 35 and older, a decline especially striking when it is compared to the Hutterite fertility schedule. Such an agespecific decline is usually a sign of contraception. Second, when we consider fertility by age at marriage, fertility declines as a function of age at marriage. For example, a woman married between the ages of 20-24 had a fertility rate of .438 in the years between her twenty-fifth and thirtieth birthday, while a woman married between ages 15-19 had a fertility of .503 when she reached the same age. This is a rather strange pattern and is quite the opposite of what contraceptive behavior would produce.

The abrupt decline of fertility from age 35 on is partially explained by the religious customs of the porteño merchant group. It was common for merchants and/or their wives to join Third Orders, religious bodies associated with the major convents of the city. One of the vows required of all entering a Third Order was that of voluntary celibacy. In addition, the large age difference between spouses suggests that a decline in male fertility might also have affected the decline in overall fertility found in women age 35 and older.

Based on these fertility rates, we can calculate the cumulative fertility of the group, the number of children which an average woman would have borne at various points in her life (see Table IV). For a woman married before age 20, by age 20 she would have borne 1.22 children; by age 25, 3.61; by age 30, 6.12; by age 35, 8.41; by age 40, 10.03; by age 45, 10.78; and by age 50, 10.88. While a woman married at ages 15-19 would have a progeny of 10.88 children by age 50, a woman married between the ages of 20-24 would have 7.41 children, and one married between the ages of 25-29 would have only 4.29.

We have already mentioned that the mean age at marriage for merchants’ wives was 18.8 years and that the average number of children born was 7.38 per family. Using family reconstitution, the distribution of the birth interval between marriage and first birth was calculated in round months (see Table V). The mode, or most frequent value for eightyeight merchant women whose information was complete, was 10 months; the average interval was 26 months and the median value was 15.5 months. This disparity between mode, mean, and median is a result of fourteen cases in which the interval between marriage and birth ranged from 38 to 155 months. Calculating the same indices for those women who had their first child within three years of marriage (eighty-four percent of the group) we find that the mode remains the same (10 months between marriage and first birth) while the mean is reduced to 16 months and the median to 12.5 months.

In calculating intervals between marriage and first birth, we find some indication of premarital coitus and pregnancy. Two cases of first birth before marriage have not been included in the calculations, but there are also two cases of first birth occurring between 0-7 months after marriage. These cases comprise four percent of all first births; the other ninety-six percent of first births occurred eight or more months after marriage and are therefore considered to be the result of intercourse after marriage.

As in all indices of fertility, the age of the mother at time of conception and/or birth is an important variable in computing her rate of reproduction. Above, age-specific average intervals between marriage and first birth have been computed for all cases, and then recomputed for that large group of women having their first child within three years of marriage. Both tables demonstrate essentially the same characteristics. The average interval between marriage and birth of first child follows a well-defined “U” curve. Women married between the ages of 10-14 have an average interval of 28.5 months; the interval shortens to 23.7 months among those women married between ages 15-19 and reaches its nadir, 21 months between marriage and first birth, among those women married between the ages of 20-24. After age 25 the interval between marriage and birth again lengthens. All intervals are shorter if we consider only those women who bore their first child within the first three years of marriage, but again the distribution curve is the same. The percentage of births within the first year of marriage also displays marked age-specific characteristics. For all women, thirty-three percent bore a child within the first year of marriage, but for those married between the ages of 20-24, this percent rises to fifty. Again, if we consider only those women who bore a child within the first three years of marriage, there is a rise in all age-specific categories but the age group 20-24 is still the strongest category.

Birth intervals for subsequent births following the first birth displayed the same characteristics as the interval between marriage and first birth (see Table VI). The average interval for the entire sample shortened from an interval of 26.5 months between marriage and first-birth to 21.2 months between each successive birth, from one to five. Between births 1-2, 2-3, 3-4, and 4-5, there was little variation, with the largest interval (that between births 2-3) being only 4.5 months greater than the smallest (that between births 3-4). Considering intervals for age-specific groups, we find the same pattern, but we can see that the smallest intervals occur among those women who married between the ages of 15-19. As this is the largest group in the sample, there is a strong suggestion that the birth intervals for this group, an average of 19.8 months between births; is an accurate indicator. These intervals between births are extremely small, and indicate that there was no attempt made on the part of the merchant group to control its birth rate, regardless of the number of children already present in the family or the number of pregnancies already completed by the woman. In fact a general tendency among all age-specific groups for the smallest intervals to occur between births 3 and 4, and births 4 and 5 suggests that the number of children already born had no effect on the rate at which children were conceived.

In reviewing birth intervals according to their proximity to the last birth, we find in general that for all women the average interval between the last four births was 22.9 months. Only between the penultimate and the last birth is there a suggestion of lengthening interval (the average interval here is 28.1 months), probably reflecting a natural reduction in the women’s fecundity produced by their age and repeated pregnancies. Age-specific data tabulated by proximity to last birth display the same patterns as the average intervals. Looking at the group of women who married between ages 15-19, the largest and most representative group in the sample, we find the average interval between the last four births to be 21.9 months. Again the last interval is markedly longer than the others, climbing to 27.1 months.

Did the death of an infant have any effect on the rapidity with which a child’s mother conceived again? This question, seemingly replete with psychological implications for the layman, serves the demographer as a test of whether in the absence of any other birth control method breastfeeding, a natural contraceptive, was practiced by a given group in a society. In a group of women who are breast-feeding their children, the death of an infant will produce the end of lactation and the protection against conception which this lactation affords. The average birth interval after the death of an infant will therefore be shorter than had the child survived. To calculate the effect of infant mortality on the average birth interval, both normal birth intervals and intervals after infant death were tabulated for the entire sample, and for age-specific groups within the sample (see Table VII). The interval after infant death was shorter in all cases except two, but the average difference was only .88, that is, less than one month. For the group of women marrying between ages 15-19, the normal interval of 21.28 months was reduced to 19.72 months (a reduction of 1.56 months) for those intervals following infant death. The slight effect of an infant’s death on the following birth interval, combined with the small birth intervals between all births, strongly indicates that the merchants’ wives, among the more economically prominent women of the city, frequently used wet nurses to feed their newborn children.⁸ The use of wet nurses is also suggested in other sources, specifically in occasional mention of amas de leche in the 1744 census, and in the widespread existence of black female slaves of childbearing age (ages 15-45), often with their own young children, in the houses of the Buenos Aires merchants.

Given their relatively young age at marriage and the small intervals between marriage and first birth, and between all succeeding births, how long did it take a merchant and his wife to complete their family? Calculating the interval in years between marriage and the birth of their last child, we find the average family constitution time to have been 15.06 years (see Table VIII). The family constitution time for women married between ages 15-19 was 15.94, while those marrying at ages 10-14 took 18.5 years to complete their families and those marrying at ages 20-24 took 12.32 years. Here there is a suggestion that the time which a woman took to complete her family was closely related to the number of years below the age of 45 (that is, the number of fecund years) which she spent in marriage. This relationship was tested by plotting the total number of children born to a couple by the total number of years married up to the woman’s age of 45 (see Chart 3).⁹ For both the entire group and for women married at ages 15-19 and 20-24, there was a strong correlation between number of children and years married, and a strongly positive slope. For every year spent in marriage up to age 45, the number of children born increased .339. In addition, graphic representation allows for the identification of a group of women who displayed low fertility patterns, approximately eleven percent of the population. Among women of low fertility, there was also a strong correlation between years spent in marriage and number of children, but only .112 children were born per year.

Of course, we know that women do not bear children at a constant rate up to age 45, the generally accepted end of female fecundity. The age at last birth was calculated for merchants’ wives, for both the entire group and for age-specific segments within the group. The average age at last birth for all women was 33.35 years old (see Table IX). If we consider only those women who were 45 or older at the end of their marriage (that is, women who completed their fecund lives within marriage) the average age at last birth rises to 36.39 years. Age-specific data on age at last birth both for all women and those who were 45 or older at the end of their marriage displays an interesting pattern. For both groups of women, the age at last birth is progressively higher for those women who married later in life. For example, among all women, those who married at ages 10-14 bore their last child at age 32.1, while those who married at ages 25-29 bore their last child at age 40. This relatively early age at last birth for those marrying young was either the result of biological exhaustion after repeated pregnancies or of voluntary celibacy when a woman and/or her husband joined the Third Order after many years of marriage and several live births.¹⁰

Except for joining Third Orders relatively late in their fecund lives, merchant families made no conscious attempt to limit their fertility. As we have seen, their fertility rates approached the highest levels known today. Only occasional absence of the male, caused by the economic necessity to travel to another city, limited sexual intercourse and the resultant pregnancy. In addition, the young age of the bride at marriage and the suspected use of wet nurses for their children served to further drive up the fertility rates and the numbers of children born per couple. Biological exhaustion, voluntary religious celibacy, early death of either spouse, and infant mortality all served to control the ultimate number of children who survived their parents, but the number of legal heirs was still high. Infant mortality was 219 per 1,000; one of every 4.5 children born to a merchant died before age 1. Nevertheless an average merchant family had 7.83 children born and 5.76 children surviving to adulthood (to age 15). In both numbers of children born per family and numbers surviving, there was a positive correlation between parents’ socioeconomic position and numbers. The wealthier merchants tended to have more children and more children surviving.

Were the porteño merchants able to bequeath their wealth and their resultant social status to their children? In spite of changing commercial patterns, frequent bankruptcy, and widely fluctuating economic fortunes, mercantile fortunes were made in late eighteenth-century Buenos Aires. But these fortunes were not safe from the disastrous effects of Spanish inheritance laws, laws which called for all property acquired after marriage to be divided equally between a man and his wife, and for equal division of each half of the estate among all legal heirs, all legitimate children. There was no protection for a merchant’s estate, no entailed estate (mayorazgo), no joint-stock companies, no investment in rural property. Estate papers demonstrate how entire estates were cut up so their pieces of personal property, business inventory, outstanding debts, urban land, and a slave or two went to each heir. The average number of children surviving per family for a group of fourteen merchants was 6.57; the average inheritance per child was only ten percent of the merchant’s total estate (see Table X). As a result, partible inheritance prevented most merchant families from entrenching themselves as a local oligarchy, and it also meant that the creole-born son of a Spanish merchant, even if he followed his father’s career, was often downwardly mobile.

Some studies of European elites have suggested that in order to maintain their wealth and position over several generations families purposely limited either marriage or fertility.¹¹ At least in the case of the Buenos Aires merchants no such conscious mechanisms were employed. Instead a combination of business conditions, legal restrictions, and fertility patterns seriously impaired the merchants’ ability to transfer their estates intact to the next generation. Although they could inherit some degree of social prestige, the sons and sons-in-law of the merchants were forced, in each generation, to amass their wealth anew. The absence of mayorazgos, combined with fertile wives who produced large numbers of legal heirs, created a society in which it was difficult for local elite members to perpetuate themselves for more than two generations. To a certain degree, group endogamy, the marriage of their daughters to fellow merchants, was an attempt to recruit new men and to perpetuate their family’s social and economic position through the female line. But the families and clans who continually rose to prominence within the commercial bourgeoisie tended to be downwardly mobile, socially and economically, by the second or third generation, due in part to the fertility rates of their wives and the survival rates of their children. This downward mobility of the principal families of the city made the survival of any one family’s position precarious while it enhanced the importance of money as a determinant of social status. It also guaranteed that throughout the eighteenth century no one family or set of families would come to monopolize the economic and social life of the city over long periods of time.

The degree to which similar fertility rates coupled with relatively high survival rates for children was present in other groups in colonial porteño society has still to be studied. Preliminary work based on colonial censuses suggests that at least in Buenos Aires the total number of children surviving to adulthood (past age fifteen) was closely correlated with socioeconomic position. Elite families tended to exhibit higher fertility and a higher survival rate for children, much like the merchants described in this study. This reproduction rate combined with the existing inheritance laws could have possibly had even more serious socioeconomic consequences for groups like government bureaucrats, lawyers, and military officers, for although these groups were at least as prestigious as the wholesale merchants of the city, they usually had far less disposable wealth in their estates.

In addition, unpublished research on other areas of Latin America suggests that high fertility was not limited to the merchants of Buenos Aires. A group of historians and demographers studying Chilean demographic patterns from 1750 to 1880 finds comparably high fertility levels in both urban and rural settings and suggests that for the elite of Santiago, mortality rates for those younger than fifteen years old were not high enough to compensate for this fertility.¹² Future study of the extent to which high fertility produced a population boom in eighteenth-century Spanish America, combined with the extent to which the Spanish crown limited or totally denied the formation of entailed estates, may prove useful in understanding both late colonial society and the social milieu of the independence movements.

Author notes