From being a poor peasant to one of the millionaires of the timethe character of Timothy Dexter He has certain characteristics: a little illiterate, with a great capacity for business, eccentric, perverse and very lucky. With good fortune or a vision for sales, the reality is that Timothy carried out several businesses throughout his life that catapulted him to be one of the richest men in Massachusetts, leaving a memorable step in the history of his city and of USA.
TImothy was born into a poor family in Malden.a town in Massachusetts, on January 22, 1747. The childhood of the historic millionaire was not the best of all: at the age of 8 he was already working as a laborer in the field and he did not go to school either, which left him with great difficulty in his life to be able to read and write. How did a poor, illiterate peasant become one of the millionaires of the time?
How Timothy Dexter made his fortune
When he was 16 years old, Dexter started working as the “che pibe” in a small workshop that made animal skin or leather for clothing and other types of products. By 1769, the worker Timothy moved to another city in the same state, Newburyport, where he began to forge a story that later made him one of the most historic people in the area. Timothy did not do badly in the business and he managed to marry a rich woman who was the widow of a former partner: Elizabeth Frothingham.
From a young age, the eccentric businessman began to build his great wealth by establishing several businesses. One of the most notable was when during the American War of Independence, Timothy began to collect as many bills as possible that society did not give importance to. Those colonial bills, called “Continental”, began to gain value once the war ended, and due to this decision the businessman was able to exchange them for Dollars, earning a great fortune.
From then on, Timothy Dexter began to be part of a group of people in which he did not quite fit in: the upper class of Newburyport. Surrounded by people who did not love him and advisors who wished him to fail as a businessman, Dexter continued to build his great fortune: he bought ships and with his fleet he began to do business in different parts of the world.
Dexter’s first destination was the Caribbean, where the millionaire carried out some of the strangest transactions. At first, and thanks to the captain of the fleet, Dexter was able to complete a business that did not seem to be very successful. Molasses producers in the area were sold frying pans with handles as if they were giant “ladles.” Furthermore, in a part of the earth where low temperatures do not occur, Timothy Dexter was able to sell a shipment full of gloves to merchants who would then sell them in Asia.
Furthermore, as if it were completely crazy, Timothy was successful in a business that was difficult to project. In that historical context, selling coal to one of the top producers of the time (England) seemed somewhat implausible and difficult to develop. However, and without fear of failure, Timothy filled his ships with coal and set out towards Newcastle, an industrial city in the United Kingdom, where he fell at the right moment: the miners’ strike in England. The factories needed the raw material so the American sold a lot of coal at very high prices, thus achieving a large revenue for his wealth.
With a great fortune, the millionaire and his wife Elizabeth built a giant house with extravagant architecture, which characterized the eccentric Timothy’s style: Roman arches and columns, a dome with an eagle, statues of different personalities of the time, among other things. The more success he achieved, the more hatred the highborn of Newburyport had against him.
Over time and with business, the Massachusetts millionaire became a delusional person, and with that, all his relationships began to break down, including his wife and daughters. Timothy began to divulge that his wife had died (when it was not true) and also made a daring decision: to fake her death.
The day Timothy Dexter faked his death
This perverse act also demonstrates the personality that the historical figure possessed. To find out how everyone around him acted upon the news of his death, Timothy Dexter decided to set up a fake funeral in his mansion, to which a large number of people were invited. Because of the shame she felt at the time that about 3,000 people were visiting the funeral, Timothy’s main accomplice, his wife Elizabeth, decided to abandon the false wake, which she led to a beating from her husband; The relationship was already completely broken.
One of Timothy’s last follies was writing his book “TO Pickle for the Knowing Ones or Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress“(“A pickle for those who know or the pure truth in a homemade dress”). In it he railed against the politicians of the time, the church and especially his wife. The highlight of the book is that it had countless spelling errors and no punctuation marks; something expected when written by a nearly illiterate person.
However, the first edition was a great success like almost all businesses in its life, as well as criticism for being a poorly readable text. To silence those voices, and in a humorous way, the second installment of the book contained a page full of punctuation marks so that the reader could complete the book as they saw fit.
Finally, Timothy Dexter actually died in 1806 and He left an indelible mark on the history of his town by being recognized as one of the luckiest millionaires in the world.
