The ocean was the primary trade route for the northern colonies. New Englanders became experts at fishing the North Atlantic for food supplies and trade. The colony of Massachusetts established an overseas trading relationship with English colonies in the West Indies. Pennsylvania specialized in shipbuilding. Timber and grains (wheat, rye, oats, barley) were major exports while consumer products and tools from England were major imports. By the late 17th century, a burgeoning middle class enjoyed tea and sugar regularly as a result of trans-Atlantic trade.
The northern-most colonies of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island were too rocky for mass agricultural endeavors. Instead, families managed small farms that provided sufficient nourishment and additional plants for the provision of medicine and clothing to the family. In the Dutch colony, large family estates were worked by tenant farmers, producing apples, tobacco and rye. The families who owned the large estate farms became wealthy from agricultural commerce. Wheat was another lucrative agricultural crop that was produced even on small to moderate sized farms in Pennsylvania and Maryland. These farms primarily shipped wheat to markets in Europe.
The northern colonies frequently traded with Native Americans. Europeans were in the market for furs. Native Americans provided furs to European settlers in exchange for beads, cloth, cooking and hunting tools. The exchange immediately altered the way that some Native American tribes lived and worked. These tribes specialized in hunting beavers, minks, foxes and deer strictly for the purpose of commerce. High demand for beaver pelts caused a rapid decline in the beaver population.
Slavery was present in the northern colonies as in the southern colonies, though not to the same extent. Slaves made up no more than 5 percent of the total population in the northern colonies. It is possible that the Christian basis for the northern colonies limited the extent to which slaves were employed for economic means. New York, the Dutch for-profit settlement, employed more than 20,000 slaves at the time of the Revolution. This was the most for any northern colony. However, the northern colonies did engage in the practice of indenturing servants. Servants would be indentured to a family or master for up to seven years of labor in exchange for passage aboard a ship bound to the Americas. A majority of European immigrants from Britain and Germany arrived as indentured servants.