Lord or Buffoon? The Facinating Story of "Lord" Timothy Dexter
Anyone who spends time in Newburyport, Massachusetts has likely admired the large stately home at 201 High Street. This white, three-story Georgian mansion was built between 1770 and 1772. It is surrounded by an imposing, almost imperious white fence. I shudder to think what the painting invoices look like, but it's a magnificent home. In 1798, it was purchased by Timothy Dexter, who had recently appointed himself a Lord, but of what kingdom, if any, is unclear.
Dexter's story is remarkable. How did a man born of average means at best rise to become the owner of such a fine home? Some say God smiled on an idiot and blind luck found him at 201 High Street. The more accurate historical record is more generous. Dexter was clearly wildly eccentric, much to both the chagrin and delight of not only Newburyport residents but the entirety of New England.
Timothy was born on January 22nd, 1747 in Malden, Massachusetts, to Esther and Nathan Dexter, a couple of modest means. Later in life, the paucity of education would not deter him from writing extensively, most of the work absent punctuation along with a robust disregard for spelling. He was apprenticed at the age of fifteen to a leather dresser in Charlestown, Massachusetts (I wonder what the colonists would think of gap years;). By the age of twenty, he had moved to Newburyport and begun plying his trade along the Merrimack.
Dexter built a respectable life the old-fashioned way, by dint of hard labor and industriousness. However, truth be told, it did not hurt his purse that he married Elizabeth Frothingham (what a name!) who by local standards was a prosperous, though not obscenely wealthy widow. But the real money, the kind of coin that in the 1700s would put you in a house visible for miles to arriving ships, didn't come from stretching and scraping leather or selling hides. This opportunity would come, as it did to many colonists, compliments of the American Revolution.
While some sources debate the exact details, Dexter was more or less a currency and debt instrument speculator. Not unlike the junk bond kings of the 1980s, he would buy up debt instruments, land warrants, state securities, and the currency of the new nation, the Continental, at steep discounts, hoping that he would eventually get a return.
It turns out that Dexter's bet was not only a good one, but an extraordinarily good one. Following the war, Alexander Hamilton's funding of Revolutionary War debt made Dexter a very rich man. What looked like a sucker's bet that was discussed with derision by many about town had paid off handsomely.
By the 1790s, Timothy Dexter had become one of the wealthiest men in Newburyport. During this decade, he grew his fortune as an active merchant in the maritime trade, as well as through other ventures. In 1798, he purchased what is now 201 High Street. This is about where the traditional story arc of a boy born poor who then becomes a success normally ends. But Dexter is only getting started. His later years are a case study in the wholly unfair aphorism that poor people are crazy, but rich people are eccentric.
Dexter would later fake his own death in order to observe how many people would attend his funeral and to ensure that all were properly mourning the loss of such an esteemed man. Some sources state that he caned his wife for not demonstrating the appropriate amount of grief, despite her being in on the ruse. At some point during the post-funeral feast, the guests became aware that Dexter was indeed very much alive, and he joined in making merry with the celebrants. In the interest of full immersion, he had a mahogany coffin built for the occasion, and even had a tomb constructed on his property. The town government would later disabuse him of being able to bury himself on his own property, his means to do so notwithstanding.
Before purchasing the mansion on High Street, Dexter had moved to Chester, New Hampshire, to reside briefly. During this time, he began bestowing aristocratic titles upon himself. Upon returning to Newburyport, he purchased the High Street home and also began to refer to himself as Lord Dexter, despite having no such lineage whatsoever. Then again, neither did Prince, yet Purple Rain was magical.
The house? The fine home was not spared the man's idiosynchrasies. On the roof he had a large cupola installed, which graces the home to this day. To the home he added minarets, as well as garish green paint to accent the brilliant white paint of the exterior. The most striking addition may have been to the grounds, where Lord Dexter added approximately forty wooden statues of the great men of the day, including, of course, himself.
The likeness of this man of such humble beginnings now stood next to Washington, Jefferson, and other giants of the day. On his own statue were the words "the first in the east, the first in the west, and the greatest philosopher in the known world." High praise to bestow upon oneself.
Jonathan Plummer, another eccentric of the time, was appointed by Dexter as the "Poet Laureat to his Excellency Sir Timothy Dexter." I can only speculate that the money was good as were the meals, which kept Poet Plummer in his employ. Dexter would write the impossibly nonsensically titled A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, the definitive collection of Dexter's musings and ramblings.
What do we make of this strange man that both amused and confounded his contemporaries enough that he became well-known throughout New England during his life, with his reputation and deeds surviving to this day? Dexter was maligned in his day as well as by some of those who would later write about him. But why?
On one side we have the opinion that a man born to parents of no means, a mere leather dresser who did not attend the best schools, could not spell or punctuate, and exhibited such poor taste could only have been a lucky idiot. Surely, that is the only explanation of how he could have bested so many erudite men from the finest families, with the best educations, steeped in the ways of good manners and decorum?
Perhaps the titters and the unflattering histories were offered to explain why these men finished far behind Lord Dexter. In their minds, it could only have been blind luck. A crazy man could not have become so successful. It just wasn't possible.
The truth is more complicated. Timothy Dexter did not simply buy up piles of Continentals and hope for a windfall, the modern equivalent of buying lottery tickets. His bets included purchasing sometimes complex and arcane debt instruments, bonds and warrants. To be even aware that this speculative opportunity existed in the first place would have required a very astute mind. Was it a risky bet? Sure. Was he a fool lighting money on fire? Not quite.
The most reliable histories paint Dexter as all of the above. Savvy financial instrument and currency trader, faker of death and attender of the after-party, writer of meandering nonsense, and owner and decorator of one of the most eccentric homes in the history of Newburyport.
Other tales of Dexter's mercantile exploits include his detractors encouraging him to fund a voyage for a shipment of coal to Newcastle, England, which at the time was a major coal mining town. They would normally have no need for a ship full of this fool's coal, yet the telling goes that Dexter's ship arrived at the same time that the mine workers were on strike, enabling him to make a tidy profit.
There were other stories of equally dubious reliability. Dexter was conned into shipping bed-warming pans and mittens to the West Indies, only to have the pans sell quickly as molasses skimmers, and the mittens to be snapped up for sale to ships bound for colder climates.
Yet there is evidence that Dexter was in on the joke, and may have even invented some of these stories. Perhaps his predilection for ignoring good taste and appropriate norms was, in large part, a way to stick it in the eye of the wealthy establishment. After withering criticism for the appalling spelling and absence of punctuation in the first edition of A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, Dexter is said to have included the following line in the second edition:
"Mister printer the Nowing ones complane of my book the first edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and thay may peper and solt it as they plese"
Following this (sort of) sentence, there was an entire page containing rows and rows of punctuation so as to provide enough for even the most persnickety reader to "peper and solt as they plese". Dexter made no changes to the atrocious spelling. The book went on to enjoy popular success, much to the annoyance of his detractors. Perhaps the man's greatest attribute was not caring about what anyone else thought of him. Wise advice.
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