Adjusted for today's dollars, Hetty Green is the richest American woman in history. But she is known more for her eccentricities than her wealth.
In 1998, American Heritage Magazine compiled a list of the 40 richest Americans in history, based on 1998 dollars. There were 39 men and one woman on the list. The richest American woman who ever lived was Hetty Green, whose fortune when she died in 1916 was estimated at more than $100 million (over $17 billion in today's dollars). Hetty Green was famous in her day, not as much for her great wealth as for her great parsimony.
Hetty Green made her money the old-fashioned way - she inherited it. Born into a prosperous whaling family in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1834, Hetty Howland Robinson began a life-long love affair with numbers and money at the age of 6 when she tagged along with her father reading him financial newspapers. When she turned 13 she began working as a bookkeeper in the family business. She invested her earnings in the bonds market and established a pattern of conservative investing which was to serve her the rest of her days.
There is an saying from the Old West that when 'fact becomes legend, print the legend.' Hetty Green's stinginess was legendary. Some of the stories about her include:
On her 21st birthday Hetty refused to light the candles on her birthday cake so as not to waste them. The next day she wiped the cake off the candles and returned them to the store for a refund.
Upon her father's death, Hetty inherited one million dollars and a four million dollar trust fund. Two weeks after his death an aunt who had promised to leave her a fortune of $2 million also died but only willed Hetty $65,000. Determined to get her aunt's entire estate, Hetty produced a new will, handwritten by Hetty which she claimed her aunt dictated to her. It took five years to settle the case.
Always suspicious that prospective suitors were only interested in her money, Hetty Robinson did not marry until 33 when she wed businessman Edward Henry Green. Hetty was the superior money manager and when she was forced to pay one of his debts, she rid herself both of the debt and of Ted.
When her son Ned was 14, he dislocated his knee in a sledding mishap. Hetty refused to take him to a hospital and instead tried to treat the injury at home and by visiting free clinics. Eventually Ned's leg needed to be amputated.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
She argued over every bill she received and that her battery of lawyers routinely had to sue her to collect legal fees.
She is said to have once spent half a night looking for a two-cent stamp.
After her ex-husband died in 1902, she moved from his hometown of Bellows Falls, Vermont to Hoboken, New Jersey to be closer to her money in New York City. Taking to wearing black, she traveled to her bankers' offices every day. The combination of her attire and eccentricities earned her the nickname 'The Witch of Wall Street.'
These frequent appearances only served to heighten the legend of Hetty Green. She lived in a series of grungy leased rooms, spending as little as $5 a week for living expenses. She would walk out of her way to buy broken cookies in bulk. She wore the same dress day after day until it was in tatters. When she absolutely had to wash the garment, she often instructed that it be laundered only on the bottom where it was dirty. Lunch would be a serving of oatmeal warmed on an office radiator. Her one extravagance seemed to be her dog, who ate better than Hetty.
When Hetty Green died in 1916 at the age of 81, her entire fortune was left to her son and daughter. They apparently did not learn their mother's lessons well. Both spent the money freely and generously
some Extra information:
There are many tales (of various degrees of accuracy) about Hetty Green's stinginess. She
never turned on the heat nor used hot water.
She wore one old black dress and undergarments that she changed only after they had been worn out[citation needed]. She did not wash her hands and rode an old carriage. She ate mostly pies that cost fifteen cents. One tale claims that she spent
half a night searching her carriage for a lost stamp worth two cents. Another asserts that she instructed her laundress to wash only the dirtiest parts of her dresses(the hems) to save money on soap.[5]
Green conducted much of her business at the offices of the Seaboard National Bank in New York, surrounded by trunks and suitcases full of her papers; she did not want to pay rent for an office. Later unfounded rumours claimed that she ate only oatmeal, heated on the office radiator. Possibly because of the stiff competition of the mostly male business environment and partly because of her usually dour dress sense (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps ascribable in part to her Quaker upbringing), she was given the nickname the "Witch of Wall Street". She was a successful businesswoman who dealt mainly in real estate, invested in railroads, and lent money. The City of New York came to Hetty in need of loans to keep the city afloat on several occasions, most particularly during the Panic of 1907; she wrote a check for $1.1 million and took her payment in short-term revenue bonds. Keenly detail-oriented, she would travel thousands of miles – alone, in an era when few women would dare travel unescorted – to collect a debt of a few hundred dollars.
Her frugality extended to family life. Her son Ned broke his leg as a child, and Hetty tried to have him admitted in a free clinic for the poor.[2] According to Green's biographer Charles Slack, the oft-repeated story that when she was recognized, she stormed away vowing to treat the wounds herself is only half true. He relates that having been found out (and perhaps also after procrastinating about seeking treatment for the boy in the first place), Green paid her bill and thereafter brought him to other doctors (while also trying home remedies).[2] Similarly, Slack relates that it is not true that the leg had to be amputated because of gangrene.[2] Rather, it was amputated after years of unsuccessful treatment. In any case, Ned ended up with a cork prosthesis.
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