Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [44]
Word that Cisco and Son was in trouble spread around Wall Street and made its way up to Hetty in Bellows Falls. She wasted no time in writing a letter to the principals. The bulk of her fortune—her securities—was not exposed, but her cash deposit of more than $550,000 might be in jeopardy if the bank failed. She demanded that the entire deposit be transferred at once to the Chemical National Bank. Cisco and Foote gulped when they read Hetty’s letter. She was not the only one to ask for a withdrawal as the rumors spread. But the desperate partners could not afford to lose their largest single depositor.
Hetty had every right to expect Cisco and Foote to do as she had asked. But there was a complication, which the partners cited in refusing to honor her demand. It seemed that while Hetty was the largest depositor at John J. Cisco and Son, Edward Green was its largest debtor. The pride of Bellows Falls, Far East trader extraordinaire, owner of thirty-one suits, generous tipper, and man-about-town, owed the bank no less than $702,000. Green had been a close associate of Foote and Cisco’s, and had been involved with them in a variety of investments. Like them, he had been a major investor in the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, serving on its board of directors and even for a short time as its president. Doubtless the collapse of the L&N had hurt him badly, but the overall economy of the early 1880s offered any number of opportunities for a speculator to lose money. Whatever Edward’s specific investments, his performance during this time tells an all too familiar tale of a man chasing one doomed investment after another in a desperate bid to recapture a lost fortune. As Edward sank further and further into debt, John J. Cisco and Son was only too willing to continue extending credit to him. Edward never explicitly offered Hetty’s fortune as collateral—at least, the bank presented no evidence of this. Nevertheless, creditors did not hesitate lending money to a man whose wife sat on a pile of $25 million. Now, Cisco and Foote asked Hetty to make good on the debt.
It’s not clear just when Edward’s serious troubles began, but a quitclaim deed, buried in an old record book in the town clerk’s office in Bellows Falls, provides a clue. It is dated June 19, 1884, three months after the death of John J. Cisco. The deed, signed by Cisco’s son, relinquished the elder Cisco’s claim to the Tucker House, for the sum of one dollar. The new owner specified in the deed is Hetty Green. There seems only one reasonable (and utterly poignant) inference to draw from this document: Edward had put up his house, either as collateral or as direct repayment of a loan, and lost it. The New York bankers, with little practical need for a house in Vermont, in turn agreed to hand the house over to their largest depositor, as a gesture of goodwill. As of June 1884, Edward was living in his ancestral family home as a guest of his wife.
Hetty was sitting in that very house, seething, when she wrote a second, and much sterner, letter to Cisco and Foote. Her husband’s finances were his own affair. She had no intention of covering loans she had not taken out. Should the bank refuse to release her money at once, she would sue. When Foote and Cisco received this missive, they took what they saw as their only remaining recourse.
The New York Stock Exchange had already closed for the day on January 15, 1885. Moneymen from the city’s banks and trusts were already bundling on their coats against the winter chill in wind-whipped lower Manhattan. Cisco and Son issued a terse announcement that it was suspending operations. Then as now, bad news was usually relayed after the close of the business day, to allow traders to mull