• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“To Esther” (Sylvia Howland), 21

Toler, Sidney S., 191

Tracy, J. Everts, 141

Treasury, U.S., 169

trolley cars, 143–45, 156

trolley workers’ strike, 144–45

Tucker House, 80, 82–83, 90, 145, 157–59, 203

demolition of, 222–23

Tucson, Ariz., 136–37

Tumbridge, J. W., 143

Twain, Mark, 67

United States (yacht), 208–9

Van Buren, Martin, 19

Van de Graf, Robert J., 213–14

Vanderbilt, Alva, 103–4

Vanderbilt, Cornelius, x, xi, 133

Vanderbilt, Henry, 103

Vanderbilt, William Kissam, 103–4

Van Twisk, Jacob, 197

Waco and Northwestern Railroad, 124–27

Wall, Joseph Frazier, 106

Wall Street, ix, x, 85–86, 87, 114, 121, 138

watered stock, 166–68

“Wealth” (Carnegie), 106

Wealthy 100, The (Klepper and Gunther), xii

Wellesley College, 216–17

Westminster Company, 187–89, 192

whaling industry, 2–4, 7, 8-g, 210, 214

Civil War and, 24

dangers of, 9

decline of, 23–24, 38, 123

products of, 2, 4

see also Isaac Howland Jr. and Company

Wharton, A. B., 185

Wharton, Edith, 20

White, James, 191–92

Wilks, Hetty Sylvia Ann Howland Green, 71, 83, 137, 143, 145–48, 153, 159, 160, 181, 196, 198, 199, 202, 209, 210

Annie Leary’s relationship with, 108, 147–48, 156, 171, 173, 175, 176

appearance of, 105, 148

in Brooklyn, 104, 145–46, 149

correspondence of, 145–46, 217–18, 224, 236n, 239n

death of, 224

engagement of, 175–78

financial education of, 112

funeral of, 225

in Greenwich, 223–24

as Hetty’s constant companion, 105, 112, 141, 142, 145

inheritance of, 204, 205, 206, 219–21, 222–26

Wilks, Hetty Sylvia Ann Howland Green (cont.)

Mabel Greens relationship with, 218, 219–20, 221

married life of, 181

personality of, 81, 105, 108, 112, 146, 148

obituaries of, 224–25

pet dog of, 217–18

Round Hill mansion donated by, 223

school years of, 80–81

suitors of, 108, 146–48, 172–78

Tucker House demolition ordered by, 222–23

wedding of, 178–80

will of, 225–26

Wilks, Katherine L., 177

Wilks, Matthew Astor, 175–80, 181, 202, 225

death of, 218, 219

Hetty’s party for, 176

prenuptial agreement of, 180, 205

Williams, George Gilbert, 133–34, 163, 236n

Williams, John M, 43

William T. Coleman and Company, 24

Wilson, Alfred C, 203

Wing, Eliza, 16

Wood, Elizabeth A., 39

Woodhull, Victoria, x

Yarmouth, Charles Francis Seymour, earl of, 173–74, 237n

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In my Parents’ home outside of Boston, there is a silver tray and a porringer that, according to family legend, were given to an ancestor of mine by Hetty Green. When my mother, Carolyn Slack, showed me the items a couple of years ago, with the suggestion that I consider writing a book about Hetty, I had only the vaguest idea of who she was talking about. I half recalled something from the Guinness Book of World Records about “world’s greatest miser.” Unfortunately, the tray and porringer contain neither inscription nor initials, and must remain the stuff of family legend. But the story was enough to set me on my way to writing this book, and I have become even more of a believer than before in the wisdom of that simple phrase: Listen to your mother.

My research began where Hetty’s life did, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and several people and institutions helped me. Edie Nichols was a small business owner who worked diligently over the past decade to keep Hetty’s name alive in her hometown through public appearances and a privately run museum. When I first called Edie, she might have dismissed me as an interloper. Instead, she greeted me warmly on many occasions, introduced me to people and resources, and even gave me a guided tour of the city. When Edie died in April 2005, Hetty Green lost her most passionate and vocal supporter, New Bedford lost a small treasure of a museum, and I, along with many others, lost a friend.

Dr. Stuart M. Frank and the staff at the Kendall Institute (part of the New Bedford Whaling Museum) gave me time and space to examine their remarkable collection of whaling books; their thick, bound volume of the Howland will trial; Howland family records; and other materials. At the New Bedford Public Library, then-archivist