![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
You know how the difference between "eccentric" and "insane" is your net worth? "Lord" Timothy Dexter was an incredibly successful entrepreneur in Revolutionary-era New England, and, well, yeah.
He was born in Malden to a working-class family, but decided that he would become a great man -- or, well, a "grat man" -- he never actually figured out spelling or punctuation. Later in life, he actually wrote a book, called A Pickle for the Knowing Ones. It's got random capitalization, arbitrary spelling, and the first edition has no punctuation in it. For the second edition, in response to complaints that the first edition completely lacked punctuation, he added in a final page consisting of rows of punctuation marks, with the instruction that "fouder mister printer the Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and thay may peper and solt it as they plese"
It's unclear if he was some sort of business genius, or just disturbingly lucky. He was ignorant, unpleasant, and intensely disliked. As far as I can tell, someone who was trying to make fun of him told him that he should "ship coals to Newcastle."
So he did. He sent a huge shipment of coal from New England to Newcastle, England, the world's largest supplier of coal.
It arrived during a miner's strike. Everybody ELSE in the port was desperate to buy coal to fill THEIR contracts. He made a killing.
He sent bed-warmers to the West Indies. Made a profit, as people bought them as ladles. He sent out a mixed shipment of bibles and cats. Which arrived at the same time as a whole bunch of missionaries and a rat infestation.
He originally made his fortune after the Revolutionary war. Over the course of the war, the Continental army had printed and paid its soldiers in its own unbacked scrip, which was now completely worthless. As a public service and a donation to the troops, some of the wealthier American patriots were buying up this scrip from soldiers, to try to get soldiers at least a LITTLE of the money they were owed. Dexter saw this, and realized that he could buy this stuff, too. And at lower prices than the wealthier Americans were getting!
He bought tons of the stuff, basically at scrap-paper prices. And then he held onto it, waiting for the market to turn.
As part of his work in trying to get the United States to be taken seriously as an economic power, Alexander Hamilton pushed through legislation to redeem Continental scrip for 1% of face value.
As he became wealthier, he wanted to get more into civic life and get more respect. He kept trying to get a position as a public official, to get some status in the community. Eventually, Malden created for him the position of "Informer of Deer", with the duties of announcing to the populace if deer wandered into the downtown.
(There was, at the time, no population of deer in the area, and hadn't been for twenty years. There are probably deer closer to downtown Malden TODAY than there were when Dexter was "Informer of Deer".)
Anyway, he eventually moved to Newburyport, where he built a mansion at 201 High Street. The mansion is still there, and, as far as I can tell, Prof. William G. Quill of Northeastern University lives there today. I'm under the impression that, over the course of the 19th century, though, a lot of its more excessive stuff was toned down, and I'd guess that it probably is today just basically a "normal" mansion, although I'm tempted to look up the professor's office hours to see if I couldn't go in and ask him what the place is like.
Right. "Lord". As you might have guessed by the fact that I keep putting "Lord" in quotes, he wasn't actually a lord of anything. But he decided that he was, so he started calling himself "Lord Timothy Dexter", and people just kind of went along with it. He was vaguely aware that lords have poet laureates, so he got himself one, a guy who he found selling halibut out of a wheelbarrow. The guy apparently decided that he'd prefer to write poems than sell fish, and Dexter needed someone to write poems about him, so it worked out great.
The only thing was that a poet laureate needs a laurel wreath, and they didn't have laurels, so he got a wreath of parsley, which was what they had at the time. Still, seemed a good deal.
After he stopped getting along with his wife, he started telling people that she'd died. When they'd point out that she was STANDING RIGHT THERE, he'd insist that, no, that was just her ghost.
There's more, but you all have Google and Wikipedia, too, so I'm going to stop there.
He was born in Malden to a working-class family, but decided that he would become a great man -- or, well, a "grat man" -- he never actually figured out spelling or punctuation. Later in life, he actually wrote a book, called A Pickle for the Knowing Ones. It's got random capitalization, arbitrary spelling, and the first edition has no punctuation in it. For the second edition, in response to complaints that the first edition completely lacked punctuation, he added in a final page consisting of rows of punctuation marks, with the instruction that "fouder mister printer the Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and thay may peper and solt it as they plese"
It's unclear if he was some sort of business genius, or just disturbingly lucky. He was ignorant, unpleasant, and intensely disliked. As far as I can tell, someone who was trying to make fun of him told him that he should "ship coals to Newcastle."
So he did. He sent a huge shipment of coal from New England to Newcastle, England, the world's largest supplier of coal.
It arrived during a miner's strike. Everybody ELSE in the port was desperate to buy coal to fill THEIR contracts. He made a killing.
He sent bed-warmers to the West Indies. Made a profit, as people bought them as ladles. He sent out a mixed shipment of bibles and cats. Which arrived at the same time as a whole bunch of missionaries and a rat infestation.
He originally made his fortune after the Revolutionary war. Over the course of the war, the Continental army had printed and paid its soldiers in its own unbacked scrip, which was now completely worthless. As a public service and a donation to the troops, some of the wealthier American patriots were buying up this scrip from soldiers, to try to get soldiers at least a LITTLE of the money they were owed. Dexter saw this, and realized that he could buy this stuff, too. And at lower prices than the wealthier Americans were getting!
He bought tons of the stuff, basically at scrap-paper prices. And then he held onto it, waiting for the market to turn.
As part of his work in trying to get the United States to be taken seriously as an economic power, Alexander Hamilton pushed through legislation to redeem Continental scrip for 1% of face value.
As he became wealthier, he wanted to get more into civic life and get more respect. He kept trying to get a position as a public official, to get some status in the community. Eventually, Malden created for him the position of "Informer of Deer", with the duties of announcing to the populace if deer wandered into the downtown.
(There was, at the time, no population of deer in the area, and hadn't been for twenty years. There are probably deer closer to downtown Malden TODAY than there were when Dexter was "Informer of Deer".)
Anyway, he eventually moved to Newburyport, where he built a mansion at 201 High Street. The mansion is still there, and, as far as I can tell, Prof. William G. Quill of Northeastern University lives there today. I'm under the impression that, over the course of the 19th century, though, a lot of its more excessive stuff was toned down, and I'd guess that it probably is today just basically a "normal" mansion, although I'm tempted to look up the professor's office hours to see if I couldn't go in and ask him what the place is like.
Right. "Lord". As you might have guessed by the fact that I keep putting "Lord" in quotes, he wasn't actually a lord of anything. But he decided that he was, so he started calling himself "Lord Timothy Dexter", and people just kind of went along with it. He was vaguely aware that lords have poet laureates, so he got himself one, a guy who he found selling halibut out of a wheelbarrow. The guy apparently decided that he'd prefer to write poems than sell fish, and Dexter needed someone to write poems about him, so it worked out great.
The only thing was that a poet laureate needs a laurel wreath, and they didn't have laurels, so he got a wreath of parsley, which was what they had at the time. Still, seemed a good deal.
After he stopped getting along with his wife, he started telling people that she'd died. When they'd point out that she was STANDING RIGHT THERE, he'd insist that, no, that was just her ghost.
There's more, but you all have Google and Wikipedia, too, so I'm going to stop there.