Timothy Dexter

Timothy Dexter (January 22, 1747 – October 23, 1806) was an American businessman noted for his writing and eccentricity.

This article is about the American businessman. For the bear enthusiast, see Timothy Treadwell.
Timothy Dexter
Timothy Dexter
Born(1747-01-22)January 22, 1747
Malden, Province of Massachusetts Bay
DiedOctober 23, 1806(1806-10-23) (aged 59)
Newburyport, Massachusetts, U.S.
Resting placeOld Hill Burying Ground, Dexter Family Plot, Newburyport
OccupationEntrepreneur
Known forUncommon good fortune, eccentricity
Notable work
A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress (1802)
Spouse(s)
Elizabeth (Lord) Frothingham
​
​
(m. 1770)​
ChildrenNancy Dexter
Samuel Dexter

Biography

Dexter was born in Malden in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He had little schooling and dropped out of school to work as a farm laborer at the age of eight.[1] When he was 16, he became a tanner's apprentice.[2] In 1769, he moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts.[3] He married 32-year-old Elizabeth Frothingham,[4] a rich widow, and bought a mansion.[3] Some of his social contemporaries considered him very unintelligent; his obituary considered "his intellectual endowments not being of the most exalted stamp".[3][5]

At the end of the American Revolutionary War, he bought large amounts of deprecated Continental currency that was worthless at the time.[3] At war's end, the U.S. government made good on its notes at one percent of face value, while Massachusetts paid its own notes at par.[3] His arbitrage enabled him to amass a considerable profit. He built two ships and began an export business to the West Indies and Europe.

Because he was largely uneducated, his business sense was considered peculiar. He was advised to send bed warmers—used to heat beds in the cold New England winters—for resale in the West Indies, a tropical area. This advice was a deliberate ploy by rivals to bankrupt him. His ship's captain sold them as ladles to the local molasses industry and made a handsome profit.[6] Next, Dexter sent wool mittens to the same place, where Asian merchants bought them for export to Siberia.[1]

People jokingly told him to "ship coal to Newcastle". Fortuitously, he did so during a Newcastle miners' strike, and his cargo was sold at a premium.[7][8] On another occasion, practical jokers told him he could make money by shipping gloves to the South Sea Islands. His ships arrived there in time to sell the gloves to Portuguese boats on their way to China.[7]

He exported Bibles to the East Indies and stray cats to Caribbean islands and again made a profit; Eastern missionaries were in need of the Bibles and the Caribbean welcomed a solution to rat infestation.[1] He also hoarded whalebones by mistake, but ended up selling them profitably as corset stays.[1]

New England high society snubbed him. Dexter decided to buy a huge house in Newburyport from Nathaniel Tracy, a local socialite, and tried to emulate him.[3][1] His relationships with his wife, daughter, and son suffered. He told visitors that his wife had died, despite the fact that she was still living, and that the woman who frequented the building was simply her ghost.[1] In one notable episode, Dexter faked his own death to see how people would react. About 3,000 people attended Dexter's mock wake. Dexter did not see his wife cry, and after he revealed the hoax, he caned her for not mourning his death sufficiently.[3][9]

Dexter also bought an estate in Chester, New Hampshire. He decorated his house in Newburyport with minarets, a golden eagle on the top of the cupola, a mausoleum for himself and a garden of 40 wooden statues of famous men, including George Washington, William Pitt, Napoleon Bonaparte, Thomas Jefferson, and himself. It had the inscription, "I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western World".

Writing

At age 50, Dexter authored A Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress, in which he complained about politicians, the clergy, and his wife. The book contained 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but without punctuation and with seemingly random capitalization. Dexter initially handed his book out for free, but it became popular and was reprinted eight times.[2] In the second edition, Dexter responded to complaints about the book's lack of punctuation by adding an extra page of 11 lines of punctuation marks with the instruction that printers and readers could insert them wherever needed.[10]

The first edition was printed by a vanity press in Salem, Massachusetts in 1802. The second edition was printed in Newburyport in 1805.[11]

Legacy
"Lord" Timothy Dexter House, Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Dexter's Newburyport house became a hotel.[1] Storms ruined most of his statues; the only identified survivor was that of William Pitt. His book remains his primary legacy to this day.

References
  1. Margaret Nicholas, The World's Greatest Cranks and Crackpots, ISBN 978-0-7064-1713-5, pp. 147–151.
  2. The Reader's Digest Book of Strange Stories, Amazing Facts. Reader's Digest Association. 1975. p. 501.
  3. History of Newburyport, Mass., 1764–1905. Vol. II. Chapter XXVII. Eccentric characters, pp. 419–431 and following. Accessed December 2019 via ancestry.com paid subscription site.
  4. ancestors.familysearch.org/en/LC8G-983/elizabeth-lord-1737-1809
  5. Timothy Dexter Obituary Notice, Newburyport Herald, 24 October 1806.
  6. Jim Stillman (Nov 15, 2006). "Lord Timothy Dexter of Newburyport, Massachusetts: Wealthy by Mistake?". Yahoo! Contributor Network. Archived from the original on July 19, 2012.
  7. Knapp, Samuel L. (1858). Life of Lord Timothy Dexter: Embracing sketches of the eccentric characters that composed his associates, including "Dexter's Pickle for the knowing ones". Boston: J.E. Tilton and Company. Archived from the original on 2007-12-02.
  8. Nash, Jay Robert (1982). Zanies, The World's Greatest Eccentrics. New Century Publishers. ISBN 978-0-8329-0123-2.
  9. Todd, William Cleaves Timothy Dexter. Boston, Massachusetts: David Clapp & Son, 1886: 6.
  10. Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981: p. 207. ISBN 978-0-86576-008-0
  11. Currier, John J. (1906). History of Newburyport, Mass., 1764–1905. Newburyport: Dalcassian Publishing Company. p. 495.

Sources
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