Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [17]
In later years, Morgan, Carnegie, and Rockefeller would embark on a spectacular spree of philanthropy, building museums, libraries, and universities that still bear their names. In doing so they would prove remarkably successful in transforming their names from symbols of ruthlessness and greed into symbols of benefaction, artistic taste, and concern for the public good. While it is true that Hetty would never turn her millions into libraries or universities, it is also true that she never bilked the government out of tens of millions of dollars, or called out the Pinkerton boys to rough up underpaid immigrant laborers. And, during those formative years of the early 1860s, she sold neither defective carbines nor overpriced barrels of pork. During these years her ruthlessness, such as it was, played out on a more personal scale. Her efforts to get control of the family fortune, which she saw as her natural right, meant focusing on one rich aunt.
In the summer of 1860, a few months after her mother’s death, Hetty approached Sylvia with a proposition. They should prepare mutual wills. Hetty would hold on to Sylvia’s will and Sylvia, Hetty’s. Sylvia had already written a will a decade earlier, when Hetty was sixteen, leaving two-thirds of her estate to Abby, or, if Abby was dead, to Hetty. According to that will, the money set aside for Abby or Hetty would be placed in a trust fund handled by appointed trustees. Hetty would have a steady income, but little practical control over the money. The purpose of a trust fund, of course, is to prevent an heir from frittering away an inheritance. There is irony in the name since a trust fund’s fundamental message is a lack of trust in the financial abilities and wisdom of the beneficiary. In the nineteenth century, when women were presumed to have no head for money or numbers, trust funds were created for them almost as a matter of course. But a young woman weaned on the financial papers, who started her own bank account at eight, and who stashed away money given to her to buy dresses, was no ditzy heiress. Hetty wanted control of what was coming to her.
Sylvia resisted the idea. She was angry at Hetty for her behavior toward the servants, for hectoring her over the house addition. Her fortune was all she had—she wished to see a sizeable chunk go to New Bedford charities. At last, Aunt Sylvia’s willpower began to crumble. She agreed to compose a new will, if only to buy some peace for herself. Hetty drew up her own will first. It bequeathed half of her estate outright to any children she might have at the time of her death, with the other half to be placed in a trust to be maintained by New Bedford businessmen Edward Mandell, Abner Davis, and Benjamin Irish. In case Hetty should die without children, all of her estate would go to the Home for Children in New Bedford. This bequest, a rare gesture of public charity on Hetty’s part, was obviously included to mollify Aunt Sylvia (the Home for Children was one of her favorite charities). Hetty’s will included no provision for Aunt Sylvia, who hardly needed Hetty’s money.
On September 19, 1860, Hetty asked Peleg Howland, a storekeeper and relative of Sylvia’s and Hetty’s, along with two other townsmen, to witness the signing. They did so at Peleg How-land’s home.
Hetty turned her attention to the more crucial matter of Sylvia’s will, in which she “gives and bequeaths unto niece