Maybe it is just someone with an accumulation of moveable property,
chattels and goods and money accumulating interest who was a merchant.

According to good old cooperative Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

" Capitalism is the system of raising, conserving and spending a set
monetary value in a specified market."

"The term capitalist as referring to an owner of capital (rather than
its meaning of someone adherent to the economic system) shows earlier
recorded use than the term capitalism, dating back to the mid-seventeenth
century.
Capitalist is derived >from capital, which evolved >from capitale, a late
Latin word based on proto-Indo-European caput, meaning "head" also the
origin of chattel and cattle in the sense of movable property . Capitale
emerged in the 12th to 13th centuries in the sense of referring to
funds, stock of merchandise, sum of money, or money carrying interest.
By 1283 it was used in the sense of the capital assets of a trading
firm.... Capitalism in its modern form is usually traced to the
Mercantilism of the 16th-18th Centuries... Among the major tenets
of mercantilist theory was bullionism, a doctrine stressing the
importance of accumulating precious metals. ..
European merchants, backed by state controls, subsidies, and monopolies,
made most of their profits >from the buying and selling of goods."

So it looks like it was definition of a merchant with moveable goods
which became a much more state definition (?), as in many respects the
capitalist was backed by the state (maybe because of the the growth of
military,church, national and local government stipends and pensions -
I don't know if Marx ever covered that?!). Europe was made up of a
patchwork of states with different currencies and colonial interests
and companies with state backing, so maybe it does mean cross
border as well?

With the different eras, pre and post Marx, of commerce and
industrialization and stock markets and limited liability and now post
industrialization (and state registration) the meaning must have changed
becoming far more politically loaded, especially with the advent of mass
education, universities and academic theorizing and now even economic
computer modelling!

This is just >from a quick skim read and I'm just pushing out first
thoughts,so maybe someone much more learned than me has the correct
definition! I assume there was never any glossary given by the local
registration office for these terms?!

Alice Josephs
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~genealice/