Hetty_ The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Charles Slack [6]
In this tight-knit Quaker community, Isaac Howland’s daughter, Mehitable, married her second cousin, Gideon Howland Jr., in 1798. In 1806, Mehitable gave birth to a daughter, Sylvia. Mehitable died in 1809, shortly after giving birth to a second daughter, Abby. By the early 1830s, when Edward Robinson arrived in town, Isaac had passed on much of the operation of Isaac Howland Jr. and Company to his son-in-law Gideon. Sylvia and Abby were by now of marrying age. With their mother dead, the girls were the sole direct heirs to Isaac Howland’s fortune, worth more than $270,000, or, nearly $6 million by today’s standards. Sylvia, ill her entire life with spinal ailments and numerous other health problems, was an invalid. An ambitious young man determined to marry into the wealthiest family in town had one choice: Abby.
Robinson’s hard work and business instincts alone would probably have been enough to ensure his rise in business. But he left nothing to chance. He began to woo Abby right away. He had been in New Bedford less than a year when he solidified his position in the whaling company by marrying the boss’s daughter. It would be difficult to envision a couple more extremely opposite than the headstrong Robinson and the delicate, retiring Abby. Abby, while physically stronger than her sister, was almost preternaturally shy and unassertive. Hetty herself rarely spoke of her mother in her later years. William Emery, the Howland family’s official genealogist, provided one of the few available descriptions: “Mrs. Robinson is recalled as a lady of a most pleasant and kindly disposition.” It does not require a cynical nature to divine that these were not the attributes in Abby that Edward Robinson found most appealing.
Edward and Abby were married on December 29, 1833. From a financial perspective, Robinson’s timing could not have been better. Just two weeks later, Isaac Howland, the founder, suffered a massive stroke and died. With Sylvia and Abby as Isaac’s only direct heirs, Robinson immediately became a major force in Isaac Howland Jr. and Company. Isaac left a total estate of $271,527.21. Edward assumed control of $90,000 (almost $2 million today) as manager of his wife’s interest in the estate. Thomas Mandell, a partner in the firm, took over another $40,000 to handle in trust for Abby. The balance of the estate, some $130,000, went to Abby’s sister, Sylvia.
In the summer of 1834, Abby and Edward moved into a large, leased house at 43 Seventh Street, on the corner of Seventh and Walnut. The house became available through the sudden and tragic demise of a happy family in a manner that would be astonishing in modern times but was all too familiar in the early nineteenth century. Captain Moses Gibbs, partial owner of two whaling ships, secretary of the Mechanics Insurance Company, and well on his way to becoming a pillar of the business community, had built the home for his bride, Mary. Then suddenly, within the space of two months in the spring of 1834, illness swept through the house, taking Moses, Mary, and a two-year-old son. A daughter, the lone survivor, went to live with her grandparents. On June 25, an auctioneer sold off the family’s possessions. The now-empty house was put up for lease and a short time later Edward and Abby moved in.
For all of New Bedford’s prosperity, 1834, the year of Hetty’s birth, had been a difficult one all around. In New Bedford as around the nation, a short supply of hard currency was driving otherwise healthy businesses into bankruptcy. New Bedford sent a delegation to petition Congress to liberalize the money supply, saying “trade and confidence are