Timothy Dexter (January 22, 1747 – October 23, 1806), self-styled Lord Timothy Dexter, was an American businessman noted for his eccentric behavior and writings. He became wealthy through marriage and a series of improbably successful investments and spent his fortune lavishly. Though barely educated or literate, Dexter considered himself "the greatest philosopher in the known world", and authored a book, A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, which espouses his views on various topics and became notorious for its unusual misspellings and grammatical errors.

Life and works

Dexter was born in Malden in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He was from a poor family of Irish and English descent who had moved to the New World the century before. He had little schooling and dropped out of school to work as a farm laborer at the age of 8.

When he was 16, he became a tanner's apprentice. In 1769, he moved to Newburyport, Massachusetts. He married 32-year-old Elizabeth Frothingham, a rich widow, and he then bought a mansion with the money. Next, Dexter sent wool mittens to the same place, where Asian merchants bought them for export to Siberia. On another occasion, practical jokers told him he could make money by shipping gloves to the South Sea Islands. His ships arrived there in time to sell the gloves to Portuguese boats on their way to China.

New England high society snubbed him. Dexter bought a large house in Newburyport from Nathaniel Tracy, a local socialite, and tried to emulate Tracy's prominent mansion.

Dexter became a well-known eccentric figure in the town, known for his desire for high office. He wrote numerous petitions to local officials, asking for his nomination for public office. In March 1776, he was appointed "Informer of Deer." His job was to inform the townspeople when deer were in the area and to enforce the laws regarding deer hunting. Dexter is said to have been content with and proud of his position, despite the fact that there were no deer in the Newburyport area. He was re-elected to the position every year until March 1788.

Writing

At age 50, Dexter authored the book A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, also known as Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress, in which he complained about politicians, the clergy, and his wife. The book contains 8,847 words and 33,864 letters, but without any punctuation and with unorthodox spelling and capitalization. Dexter also signs his name at the end of each chapter, as though they were letters. One section begins: In the second edition, Dexter responded to complaints about the book's lack of punctuation by adding an extra page of 11 lines of punctuation marks with the instruction that printers and readers could insert them wherever needed—or, in his words, "thay may peper and solt it as they plese".

Legacy

thumb|"Lord" Timothy Dexter House, Newburyport, Massachusetts

Some of Dexter's social contemporaries considered him very unintelligent; his obituary considered "his intellectual endowments not being of the most exalted stamp". Dexter attempted to burnish his own legacy by enlisting the efforts of Jonathan Plummer, a fish merchant and amateur poet, who extolled his patron in verse: After his death, Dexter's Newburyport house had its household furniture, gilt balls, and much of the garden statuary auctioned off on May 12, 1807. The Great September Gale of 1815 toppled most of the remaining statues, and the survivors were sold at another auction; some ended up being burned for firewood.

Ultimately, fewer than six of the original forty statues survived to the present day, being rediscovered during the Great Depression as a result of a Works Progress Administration survey; the most prominent one being that of William Pitt, restored by the Smithsonian Institution. It was loaned to the local Museum of Old Newbury in 1994, and its ownership was transferred to the local museum in January 2025. In 2013, a pair of carved figurines that once adorned the house's entrance, titled "Peace" and "Plenty", were put on auction by an Amesbury auction house, but failed to meet the $40,000 reserve price expected by the seller.

The Timothy Dexter House was briefly converted into an inn shortly after Dexter's widow Elizabeth died in 1809, followed by a succession of private owners. As restoration works came close to completion, a blowtorch accident on August 15, 1988, caused a fire that gutted the building, but original blueprints preserved by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities allowed the house to be rebuilt exactly as it was. The Timothy Dexter House remains the Quill family's private residence to this day.

After Dexter's death, a street that intersects the High St corner where the Timothy Dexter House is located was named "Dexter Ln" in his honor. The first house built on the street was constructed in 1967. The Dexter Lane Project, a 16-unit affordable housing development, is currently planned to be built at 14 Dexter Ln.

References

Sources

  • <!-- This "deadlink" works fine on a laptop. In the WP Mobile App it goes to books.google.com and produces a 404 error. -->
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  • The Official Virtual Seat on the "Noue Systom of Knollege & Lite" Assigned the Notable and Most Noble Lord Timothy Dexter
  • Complete transcription of "A Pickle for The Knowing Ones; or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress" ~ with translation and annotations
  • NPR's "Weekend Edition": The 'Literary' Legacy of Lord Timothy Dexter