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colonial trade

Timothy Dexter, the Ridiculous Millionaire Who Sold Coals to Newcastle

Timothy Dexter was considered a lucky fool for selling coal to Newcastle and bed warmers to the tropics – and somehow making money on the ventures.

Lord Timothy Dexter with his hairless dog

He rounded up the stray cats of Federalist Newburyport, Mass., shipped them off to the Caribbean – and made money.

He wrote a semiliterate book without any punctuation – and it went into eight printings.

Timothy Dexter failed at the one thing that mattered most to him: acceptance by high society. Perhaps it was because he was vain and ridiculous. He did, after all, call himself a lord and stage his own mock funeral and surround his High Street mansion with painted wooden statues of the great men of history.

But the question still lingers even to this day: Was he incredibly lucky or incredibly shrewd?

Timothy Dexter

Timothy Dexter was born in Malden, Mass., on Jan. 22, 1747. The first Dexter had immigrated from Ireland a century before. His family had little money and young Timothy received little education.

He went to work as an indentured servant on a farm at the age of eight. At 14 he left the farm for Charlestown, Mass., to work as an apprentice dressing leather for breeches and gloves. When he finished his apprenticeship, his employer gave him a new suit of clothes, called a freedom suit.

Novelist John P. Marquand, another son of Newburyport, wrote two books about Timothy Dexter. The first repeated the legend, the second, Timothy Dexter Revisited, offered a more sympathetic view of the man. In Dexter’s case, noted Marquand, he received a good freedom suit. That “proves that Dexter had been sober and diligent,” Marquand wrote. “In fact, all evidence indicates that he was quiet and industrious for many years after his arrival in Newburyport, and not conspicuous until he suddenly made a fortune.”

Newburyport

Dexter sold his freedom suit for eight dollars and 20 cents, which helped pay for his relocation to Newburyport sometime around 1767. At that time the seaport town attracted many artisans and tradesmen. Business boomed and Newburyport rivaled Boston in commercial importance. In 1767, Newburyport’s shipbuilders built 70 vessels.

Within a year Dexter bought land and married Elizabeth Frothingham, a modestly well-off widow nine years older than he. She had four children and a house.

He set up shop in the basement of his wife’s house, selling moosehide trousers, gloves, hides and blubber. Elizabeth also opened a shop selling notions.

By the end of the American Revolution he had saved several thousand dollars. He spent it all on worthless Continental currency. When Congress decided to make good on the scrip, Dexter became a very rich man. Lucky or shrewd?

The Tracy house as public library, 1899

Sudden Wealth

When Dexter suddenly came into his fortune in 1791 or 1792, he lost his moorings, according to Marquand. He and his wife had toiled steadily for more than 20 years. He had risen by his own efforts in a competitive marketplace and won respect as a businessmen. But now as a man of considerable means, the Timothy Dexter of legend and lore came into view.

Something, wrote Marquand, encouraged the fantastic side of Timothy Dexter’s temperament.

Cats and Bed Warmers

He bought a magnificent house on State Street that had belonged to Nathaniel Tracy and now serves the Newburyport Public Library. He built two ships, the Mehitabel and the Congress. Stories are still told of the improbable — and lucky — trades he made.

He famously shipped coals to Newcastle, where they sold at a premium during a coal miner’s strike.

He once sent bed warmers to the tropical West Indies, where they found a use as tools in the molasses industry.

One year, Newburyport had a problem with stray cats. Town Meeting voted on an article to destroy them all. The motion failed by a vote of 50-50. The next day, Dexter put an ad in the paper offering to pay for stray cats and promising to treat them well. He sent them to the Caribbean, where warehouse owners paid a premium for them. Dexter may or may not have known about the infestation of mice bedeviling the plantations.

Dexter also sent gloves to Polynesia, where Portuguese traders bought them on their way to China.

He claimed he cornered the whalebone market just as the French fashion for large corsets — or was it hoop skirts? — arrived.

But like many wealthy people, Dexter may have wanted to bend the truth just a bit about how he made his money.

Trouble at Home

Life at home in the Tracy mansion did not match Timothy Dexter’s business success. His hot-tempered wife scolded him often, not without cause. He had a roving eye and drank far too much.

Elizabeth Dexter probably contributed to his need for acceptance. She came from the New Hampshire Gilman family, which had produced a governor, John Taylor Gilman. Timothy Dexter had had real estate dealings with his wife’s family, and they probably looked down on him. He began to call her a ghost and refused to acknowledge she was alive.

They had two children, Samuel and Nancy. Dexter hoped Samuel would turn into an educated gentleman. Instead, he turned into a reckless drunk. Sam convinced his father to let him take one of his ships to England to sell the cargo. Instead, he blew it all at the gambling table.

Nancy had beauty but no brains. She married Abraham Bishop, a Yale scholar with little money, and moved to New Haven with him. The marriage failed, he beat her and she took to drinking heavily. Alcohol did not improve her already feeble wits, so Nancy returned home where her family shut her away.

Amidst these troubles, Timothy Dexter claimed he grew increasingly “nervous.” And so he sold the Tracy house in 1796 and decamped to Chester, N.H.

Earl of Chester

Despite his drinking, Dexter still had business sense. Irving Wallace noted Timothy Dexter founded his fortune on sobriety and a hangover. He never drank in the morning and he never conducted business in the afternoon.

Chester Street, Chester, N.H.

Marquand speculated he moved to Chester, a thriving mercantile town, to invest in real estate. Whatever the case, he took to calling himself the Earl of Chester. A child who called him “Lord Dexter” could expect a quarter, an adult, perhaps dinner and drinks.

He continued to pursue women, possibly the reason a lawyer waylaid him and beat him savagely.

Lord Dexter

After his assault, Lord Dexter returned to Newburyport. He bought a princely estate once owned by Jonathan Jackson, Nathaniel Tracy’s business partner.

The Lord Timothy Dexter House

He created an outdoor museum on the grounds with 40 garishly painted wooden statues of such diverse figures as Louis XVI, Adam and Eve, Toussaint Louverture and John Hancock. The first three U.S. presidents stood astride a giant arch. Dexter had at least one statue of himself, with the motto, “I am the first in the East, I am the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the western world.”

Marquand believed Dexter’s madness had a method. He had invested in the Essex-Merrimack Bridge, and traffic was falling off. Dexter, thought Marquand, was trying to increase traffic across the bridge with his “outdoor museum.” It did attract many visitors, including pretty young damsels with whom Dexter tried improper liberties.

As his drinking and tempter worsened, Lord Dexter turned to eccentrics and sycophants for praise and comfort. Madame Hooper, for example, had a double set of teeth and a chicken for a companion. She told his fortune. Jonathan Plummer, a fishmonger and purveyor of pornography, wrote poems about Dexter’s greatness. He also had a little dog, probably a Mexican hairless, who never left his side when he was drunk.

In 1802, Dexter published a 24-page book that criticized the clergy, politicians and his wife. Full of misspellngs, it had no punctuation. He called it A Pickle for the Knowing Ones (you can read the whole thing here). He handed the book out for free, but it grew popular and went through eight reprintings. In the second edition, Dexter added a page that consisted of 13 lines of punctuation marks with instructions the readers could distribute them as they pleased.

Wallace described it as ‘an egotistical, opinionated, coarse defense of Dexter, by Dexter, against all “Enemys” who were anti-Dexter.’

Funeral

Shortly before Dexter died, he staged his own funeral, bribing his family to go along with the ruse. He wanted to see how people would react. He beat his wife afterward because she didn’t cry enough.

Lord Timothy Dexter died at age 59 on Oct. 26, 1806, leaving money for the care of Newburyport’s poor. The storm of 1815 damaged the statues, and they sold for a few dollars at auction. Those that weren’t sold were burned.

The Timothy Dexter house became a tavern, and then went through a series of owners. Marquand noted that several wealthy families lived in it and added Victorian embellishments. It was hard, he wrote, to tell where Dexter left off and the Victorians started.

In 1988, painters set it on fire by removing paint with a torch. The fire destroyed the cupola and golden eagle on the roof, but the Society for the Preservation of New England Architecture (now Historic new England) had the original blueprints. The house was rebuilt, and is now privately owned.

Years after he died, Sarah Anna Emery described Dexter in Reminiscences of a Newburyport Nonagenarian. “Though ignorant and illiterate, and doubtless somewhat indebted to luck for his good fortune, still it is evident the man was both shrewd and sagacious,” she wrote.

The Lord Timothy Dexter House and Museum

Watch the author of this story discuss Timothy Dexter here.

This story was updated in 2023.

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In 1634 John Stone Is Lost in the Connecticut Fog of War

In 1634, Pequot Indians captured a vessel commanded by English trader John Stone at the mouth of the Connecticut River. They killed him in retaliation for the death of a Pequot leader. It was the only time in Stone’s life he could be considered innocent.

John Stone

Stone was an independent trader who worked the New England coast. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony reviled him for his rowdy ways, which included excessive drinking, blasphemy, bullying and sleeping with married women. He was, however, from a well-connected British family (a cousin was governor of Maryland). So rather than punish Stone, the Puritans banned him on penalty of death should he return.

As a freelancer, John Stone was half trader and half pirate, traveling between England, America and the Indies. He wreaked havoc as he went. He was, at one point, even accused of cannibalism. Stone kidnapped Indians and forced them to guide his ship and wasn’t above trying to sell them. His actions offended both the Indians and the colonists, who needed Indian trade.

Trade War

As Stone took his small ship south into the mouth of the Connecticut River, he steered straight into a festering trade war. The Dutch West India Company had arrived in Connecticut in 1632, building a fort at the northeast corner of the Dutch New Netherland colony in the new world.

They built Fort Good Hope was at what is now Hartford. For a year the powerful Pequot tribe had exclusive rights to trade with the Dutch. But the arrangement angered other Indians in the area, notably the Narragansett.

Meanwhile, the English expanded into Connecticut with settlements of their own. They then stepped on Dutch claims and provided a competing trading partner that the Indians could deal with.

After a year of fighting, the Pequot leader Tatobem agreed that all tribes in the area could trade with the Dutch.

1685 map of New England

In 1634, however, the fighting continued and the Dutch stepped in with a rather ham-handed gesture. They kidnapped Tatobem and demanded ransom. After the colonists received the ransom, they delivered Tatobem back to the Pequot – already dead. Whether his murder was intended or not isn’t clear.

Revenge

This development infuriated the Pequot. According to custom, the Pequot should either seek revenge by killing a Dutch leader or demanding a heavy payment. And so John Stone entered the picture.

Accounts of Stone’s arrival in Connecticut vary. He headed south hoping to find friendlier relations with the English in Virginia. One story holds that he arrived at an Indian settlement under pretext of trade, but soon he and his crew grew drunk and violent. Another version holds that the Pequot simply identified Stone as the target of their revenge plan.

Either way, John Stone didn’t finish his journey south to Virginia. Instead, the Pequot murdered him in Connecticut. While the Dutch may have accepted this as just, the British saw nothing just about it. Stone was not Dutch. How could his murder be seen as fair exchange for Tatobem – who the Dutch had killed? The Pequot acknowledged the error and tried to make payment to settle the dispute, but the British had other ideas.

British Demands

The Massachusetts Bay Colony tried to use Stone’s death to its advantage, hoping to gain something useful from his otherwise noxious life. At a meeting with the Pequot, the British laid out their demands: They would hand over Stone’s murderers for trial, cede territory to Massachusetts, and trade only with the English in the future.

Thanks, but no thanks, the Pequot replied, though eventually they and other Connecticut Indian Tribes would have little choice but to trade almost exclusively with the British. While the Dutch viewed the Fort of Good Hope as merely an outpost on the fringe of their New Netherland Colony, the British were expanding aggressively into Connecticut.

By 1642, the Dutch maintained just 15 men at Fort Good Hope. The British, meanwhile, were building a new town called Hartford, which would soon swallow up the fort. The Dutch council that ran the fort would note in council minutes:

Whereas our territory on the Fresh River (Connecticut River) of New Netherland, which we purchased, paid for and took possession of, and which in the year 1633, long before any Christians were on the said river, was provided with a blockhouse, garrison and cannon, has now for some years past been forcibly usurped by some Englishmen and given the name of Hartford.

‘Beating with mattocks’

The Dutch complained they had protested the English presence, but to no avail.

…They moreover treat our people most barbarously, beating them with clubs and mattocks, even to the shedding of blood…[W]e have…chosen patiently to suffer violence and to prove by deeds that we are better Christians than they who go about clothed with the outward semblance thereof, until in its time the measure shall at last be full.

When British and Dutch officials finally drew compromise boundaries in 1650, Hartford fell well within British territory. The Pequot, meanwhile, had suffered significantly from the loss of Tatobem. His son Sassacus would take over leadership of the Pequot, but only after a power struggle that resulted in many members of the tribe leaving.

Thanks to: The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America by Scott Weidensaul. This story about John Stone was updated in 2020.

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The Narragansett Pacer – the Lost Horse of the New England Colonies

It’s not exactly clear when the first horse officially called a Narragansett Pacer appeared in Rhode Island, though it was likely in the late 1600s. Its emergence marked the first true American breed of horse.

In 1672, John Hull – the Massachusetts mintmaster who had properties in Narragansett and Cape Cod – wrote his partners with a proposal. If they fenced in part of their land and imported some particularly fine horses from Europe they might well produce a horse bred specifically for New England.

Race Horse and Trainer (unknown artist, National Gallery of Art)

The region had few streets and riders needed horses different than English horses.

The most prized English horses were bred for speed in flat racing. And work horses had lanes in which to work. Neither breed could master New England’s wilderness.

Within a couple of decades, Hull’s vision would become reality.

Narragansett Pacer

From the earliest days of New England’s settlement, colonists prized their horses. They came from Europe on the first ships from Britain, Spain and the Netherlands.

Over time, however, breeders in Rhode Island took a more active role in promoting the horse perfect for the new colonies: The Narragansett Pacer. Unlike a racehorse bred to produce quick, bursting speed over a flat course, it was a relatively small horse, but bred and trained to move swiftly over rough terrain with tremendous endurance. As a pacer, it had a somewhat awkward high step, but it did not sway from side to side and could carry a man 50 miles or more in a day.

Edmund Burke

The British politician Edmund Burke wrote an Account of the European Settlement in America in 1857. In it, he noted the emerging breeds of horses in New England:

They have, besides, a breed of small horses which are extremely hardy. They pace naturally, though in no very graceful or easy manner; but with such swiftness, and for so long a continuance, as must appear almost incredible to those who have not experienced it.

As a member of Parliament, Burke tried to convince his colleagues to avoid war with America. Instead, he wanted to grant the colonies the right to establish their own parliament and courts, while remaining under the umbrella of the British Empire. His efforts in this regard failed, but the word of the Narragansett Pacer spread.

By the early 1770s, horses ranked among the top 10 colonial exports. Shipments of horses regularly left New England for the southern colonies and the Caribbean.

Gold Standard

The Narragansett Pacer soon became the gold standard of horses in the colonies. George Washington owned a pair, which he highly valued. Paul Revere was said to have ridden a Narragansett Pacer on his famous midnight ride, though proof is scant.

It is known that Narragansett Pacers, ‘of extraordinary fleetness, and astonishing endurance’ were ridden by governmental post riders during the American Revolution. Riders hitched them outside the house and War Office of Connecticut Gov. Jonathan Trumbull in Lebanon, Conn. The horses were ‘ready, on any emergency of danger, to fly with advices, in any desired direction, on the wings of the wind.’

Jonathan Trumbull

Rhode Islanders raced the pacers on the beaches of Narragansett. While Puritan Massachusetts frowned on sporting events such as racing, the more liberal Rhode Island allowed it. The horses also raced in Virginia.

Though highly popular for more than 200 years, the Narragansett Pacer doesn’t exist today. Historians of horses do not really know why. They may have simply dwindled away due to changing times.

An American Saddlebred, the descendant of the Narragansett Pacer

As American roads improved in quality and travelers used coaches more widely, the pacer’s gait and size made it less desirable. Meanwhile, the horse would only get more attractive in the Caribbean for work on plantations and on the rough island roads. That led some to suspect the breeders simply shipped away the last of the Narragansett Pacer over time.

Hat tip to: Historic Rhode Island Farms by Robert A. Geake. This story was updated in 2023.

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