Timothy Dexter: Emperor of America
by Timothy Dexter, who believed that he should be made Emperor of America, made a fortune buying useless foreign currency during the War of Independence, sold warming pans and woollen mittens to the West Indies and even coal to Newcastle.
If there was ever an award presented to the most eccentric eccentric of all time, a serious contender for the title would surely bethe 18th century entrepreneur – Timothy Dexter. The man who believed he should be emperor of America.
Timothy Dexter, born in Massachusetts in 1747, a farm labourer by the age of eight, an apprenticed leather-dresser who could barely read or write and regarded as an idiot by those that knew him – went on to accumulate a huge fortune by literally selling coal to the mining area of Newcastle in England and amongst other things, woollen mittens to the sweltering islands of the West Indies. As a businessman and entrepreneur he was nothing short of an enigma.
However, as an individual, his behaviour was bizarre to say the least!
By reason of the way that he had made his fortune, seen by many older, long- established Boston families as ‘new’ money and therefore vulgar, he was totally shunned by their ‘society’ and excluded from all of social events. Because of what he regarded as their unfounded prejudice against him, Dexter established his own ‘society’, surrounded himself with his own ‘courtiers’, one of whom was a 6ft 7in giant he called ‘Tiny’, and began calling himself ‘Lord’ Timothy Dexter.
Within the large garden of his mansion, that he referred to as his ‘court’, and in a prominent position that could be seen by all those passing by, he placed – on the top of tall plinths – forty life-sized, hand-carved, wooden statues of famous people such as Admiral Lord Nelson, William Pitt, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, George Washington, and of course – ‘Lord’ Timothy Dexter.
In true entrepreneurial style Dexter enlarged his garden to become an open-air museum, charging members of the public a small fee to enter. One of the exhibits of which he was particularly proud was the tomb he had built in anticipation of his eventual demise, complete with silk-lined mahogany coffins. The tomb also contained, among the usual funeralaccoutrements, a speaking trumpet, a set of smoking pipes with a good supply of tobacco and…a box of fireworks!
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