Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [12]
Fally Brownell did the cooking and housekeeping. She had been with Sylvia Ann since 1842, and hence had known Hetty as well almost all of the girl’s life. Another vital member of Sylvia’s staff was Electa Montague, who had arrived as a nurse for Abby in 1859, when she was staying with Sylvia. Following Abby’s death in 1860, Electa stayed on to care for Sylvia.
With Sylvia unmarried and childless, Hetty was the sole blood heir to the Howland whaling fortune. As such, she saw Sylvia not just as an aunt, but as the caretaker for a fortune that would one day pass on to her. She began to fear the influence that the coterie of nurses and servants might have on Sylvia. Sylvia was weak and often indecisive. How could Hetty be sure that some servant wouldn’t swindle her out of a chunk of the estate? Her gnawing fear quickly developed into an obsession, until she could barely stand the thought of Sylvia being alone with her staff.
In particular, she resented Fally Brownell, the cook and housekeeper. Sylvia trusted Fally implicitly, to the point that she gave Fally the key to a large, hair-covered trunk that Sylvia kept in a closet in her bedroom. The trunk held some clothes, jewels, and other belongings, but it also held money and financial papers. Sylvia for years had kept the key to herself, retrieving money or papers from the trunk as she needed them. But since she had grown weaker, about 1859, she had turned the keys over to Fally, making Fally, now in her late sixties, the de facto keeper of the household money. Fally kept the keys locked in a trunk of her own, under strict orders not to give them to anyone, including Hetty, without her employer’s specific instruction.
This intimate show of trust between Sylvia and Fally infuriated Hetty and deepened her paranoia. And that paranoia only intensified in 1861, when Edward Robinson decided to move to New York City, asking his twenty-six-year-old, unmarried daughter to join him there. What devious plans might Fally and the rest of them devise with Hetty more than two hundred miles away?
Robinson’s decision to leave New Bedford coincided with his decision that same year to close up operations of the venerable Isaac Howland Jr. and Company. As always, his business timing was impeccable. He had entered the whaling business in the 1830s, just as it was approaching its zenith, and now he quietly but quickly sold off the ships and other assets when he recognized unmistakable signs that the industry was headed for a decline from which it would not recover. The recent discovery of oil in Pennsylvania, combined with new techniques for refining it, promised a new and seemingly inexhaustible supply of oil that didn’t require costly, dangerous voyages on the far seas. But another factor greatly hastened the downfall of whaling—the Civil War.
In New Bedford, the war had started—as wars invariably do—amid a burst of optimism and euphoria. In April 1861, just days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, former Massachusetts Governor John H. Clifford whipped the citizenry of New Bedford into a patriotic fervor with a speech in front of City Hall, promising “untarnished glory” and “hearty joy and honor” to enlistees. A Ladies’ Soldiers’ Relief Society was quickly established, collecting flannel shirts, blankets, mittens, quilts, preserved fruits, coffee, tea, cocoa, lemons, brandy, woolen socks, undershirts, and dozens of other goods in bulk to support the troops. The state called on New Bedford, based on its population, to provide 2,100 soldiers to the cause. In the end, New Bedford sent 3,200, several hundred of whom never returned.
Whalers fortunate enough to assemble working crews during the war found themselves besieged by Confederate raiders. Confederates destroyed