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Then Again: Fabulously wealthy Vermonters of the 1800s had little else in common - vtdigger.org

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James Fisk worked as a traveling salesman, based in Brattleboro, before becoming a major force in the business world as a stockbroker and executive. A sign on the wagon identifies Fisk as a “jobber,” or wholesaler, and advertises “silks,” “shawls,” and “dress goods.” Photo from Vermont Historical Society

The nation’s industrial boom during the 19th century produced a small group of fabulously wealthy Vermonters. Great wealth was about all the group’s members had in common. They found their fortunes in different ways and had their own relationships with money. 

While some were quite generous, using it to benefit the general public, others spent it mostly on their own indulgences or, in the case of one eccentric millionaire, on virtually nothing at all.

Jim Fisk dreamed of making a fortune, in any way possible. Fisk was born in Pownal and moved to Brattleboro as a young boy, but he saw his future and his fortune were elsewhere. He left town one day as a teenager and literally joined a touring circus. Fisk wasn’t the ringmaster; he sold tickets. But the position gave him a vantage point to observe how flash and flair could attract paying customers. 

When he left the circus, he returned home and went into business with his father as a traveling salesman. Fisk eventually earned enough to buy out his father. When he bought more horse-drawn wagons, he painted them brightly to catch customers’ eyes and took them on longer sales routes.

Fisk’s ambition got him noticed. Eban Jordan, president of the Jordan, Marsh & Company, saw that Fisk was selling great numbers of his company’s goods and offered him a job in Boston. Fisk eagerly accepted and moved south with his young wife, Lucy.

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 gave Fisk an idea. He talked Jordan into sending him to Washington to drum up business. Ensconced in a suite at a fashionable hotel, Fisk entertained government officials and secured military contracts for everything from uniforms to underwear to blankets. Jordan soon made Fisk a partner.

The war cut off Jordan Marsh from the Southern cotton it needed for many items, so Fisk sent agents south to buy massive amounts of contraband cotton and sneak it through the North’s blockade. Fisk’s illegal dealings made him rich.

Fisk dabbled in bribery and stock fraud with famed financier Jay Gould and others to cheat railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt out of the equivalent of roughly $100 million today. Fisk and his cohorts fled their New York office, crossing into New Jersey to avoid prosecution. They returned to the city after bribing New York legislators to legalize their scheme retroactively.

James Fisk, who never served in the military, donated money to save a New York unit from bankruptcy shortly after the Civil War. After the unit elected him an honorary colonel, he ordered himself a ceremonial uniform. Photo from Vermont Historical Society

The following year, Fisk and Gould tried to corner the gold market. They feverishly bought gold, driving up the price. But President Grant got wind of the scheme. Outraged, Grant had his government flood the market with federal gold, popping the gold bubble Fisk and Gould had inflated. Ever savvy, Fisk and Gould sold their gold in time to save their fortunes, but many average investors were ruined by what became known as Black Friday in 1869.

Perhaps feeling guilty for not serving during the Civil War, Fisk saved a New York regiment from bankruptcy. In thanks, the regiment elected him an honorary colonel. Fisk purchased and began wearing a $2,000 gold-trimmed uniform, despite never having served a day in the military. The flamboyant uniform befit a man whose nicknames included “Diamond Jim” and the “Barnum of Wall Street.”

A sordid affair ended Fisk’s life. He fell in love with an aspiring actress, Josephine Mansfield, who was in a relationship with another financier, Edward Stokes. Fisk and Stokes were also adversaries in a court case involving an oil refinery. Stokes demanded Fisk pay him $200,000 or he would release Fisk’s love letters to Mansfield. 

The judge, having learned of the blackmail threat, ordered Stokes to return the letters. Stokes was humiliated that his treachery had become public. Incensed, he stalked Fisk. Learning that Fisk was headed to the Grand Central Hotel in New York on Jan. 6, 1872, Stokes lay in wait with a Colt revolver. As Fisk entered the lobby and started up the stairs, Stokes shot him twice. As he lay dying, Fisk said, “For God’s sake, will no one save me?” 

Fisk was only 36 when he died. Despite his corrupt business practices, an estimated 20,000 mourners turned out to pay their respects in New York, and thousands more greeted the train that returned his body to Brattleboro. He is buried beneath a large monument, paid for by his estate, in Prospect Hill Cemetery. 

Not everyone remembered Fisk fondly. A respected member of the New York Stock Exchange had died the same day as Fisk, but Exchange directors decided to delay lowering the flag for fear people might think it was Fisk who was being honored.

Hetty Green

While Fisk was capable of spending money freely, Hetty Green was almost pathologically unable to spend it, despite being the world’s richest woman at the time of her death in 1916. Because of her fame and her sour disposition, residents of her adopted Vermont hometown called her “The Pride and Pain of Bellows Falls.” That was kind compared to her other nickname: “The Witch of Wall Street.”

Hetty Green was a shrewd investor, but was better known for her stinginess. She was apparently always afraid people would try to take advantage of her because of her extreme wealth. Photo from Vermont Historical Society

Green was sole heir of a wealthy Quaker whaling family. Raised mostly by her father and grandfather, she learned the supposedly manly world of business. From the age of 6, she read the financial pages daily to her grandfather, whose eyes were failing. She opened her first bank account at age 8. By 13, she was bookkeeper for the family business. “By the time I was 15,” she once said, “… I knew more about these things than many a man that makes a living out of them.” 

That financial acumen came in handy. At age 30, Hetty suddenly became fabulously rich. Her father died and left her nearly $6 million, a staggering sum at the time. But because women were not considered capable of handling money, she was given control of only $1 million. The rest was left in trust. She would get the interest, but no say over how it was invested.

Two weeks later her aunt died. Hetty, who helped write the will, expected to inherit the entire $2 million estate. Unbeknownst to Hetty, however, her aunt had written a new will. In it, she left half her money to orphans and widows, and to the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, to build a water system. Hetty would receive the other half, but only in trust. 

Hetty wasn’t one to leave money on the table. She fought for years to have the court reject the new will, but it was in vain.  

At age 33, Hetty married Edward Henry Green, a wealthy merchant from Bellows Falls. If local residents hoped this union would bring riches to the town, they were mistaken. Businesspeople complained that Hetty made unreasonable demands and refused to pay a fair fee. For her part, Hetty claimed everyone in town was after her money and overcharging her. 

Green tried to hide her wealth, even advising a friend to wear her shabbiest clothes to the doctor. “You will get the same treatment,” Hetty said, “but it will cost you less.”

Bellows Falls lawyer F.B. Pingree said Green would visit him daily, ostensibly to gossip, but he suspected she was seeking free legal advice. Local legend claims she told her laundress that she would pay to have only the bottom 2 inches of her dress washed, because that’s all that got dirty. And stories persisted that she bought broken cookies in bulk and searched hours for a missing 2-cent stamp. 

She denied the most damning rumor, that she’d refused to pay to have her son’s injured leg treated. It eventually had to be amputated.

Photographs of Green show her dressed all in black, which was common among Quaker families like the one she grew up in. That dark attire, along with a dose of misogyny, might have contributed to the witch nickname.

The stories about Green’s miserliness overshadow her prowess as an investor. She purchased stocks in mining companies and railroads, as well as government and corporate bonds. Rather than squander her inheritance on poor business ventures, she had it grow to a staggering $100 million. 

When she died, Green left her entire estate to her children. She wouldn’t saddle them with trusts, nor would she give any to charity.

Silas Griffith

Money came first with Silas Griffith. His business career started when he borrowed money to open a general store in his hometown of Danby. He quickly became one of the most successful businessmen in town. In 1864, when he was 27, his enterprise was worth the equivalent of about $800,000 today. 

But that wasn’t the bulk of his wealth. Griffith made most of his fortune in other enterprises. Buying up land, much of it in foreclosure, Griffith amassed more than 50,000 acres in Mount Tabor, Danby, Dorset, Arlington, Peru, Manchester, Wallingford and Groton. He became a lumber and charcoal baron.

Efficiency was the watchword in Griffith’s enterprises. He ordered the construction of nine sawmills around his vast holdings to shorten the distances timber had to be hauled. He had what are believed to be the first telephone lines installed in Vermont, strung between the main office and each sawmill. He insisted that loggers use saws instead of axes to reduce the amount of wood wasted in felling trees. His sawmills produced great mounds of sawdust, which he sold to icehouses that used it as insulation to keep the ice from melting. 

Silas Griffith believed in efficiency. He had a raised siding constructed at the Danby railroad station to make it easier to load charcoal onto trains. The charcoal kilns can be seen behind the horse-drawn wagon. Photo from Vermont Historical Society

And he saw great potential in the bits of wood that were too small to be turned into lumber. Griffith had the scraps converted to charcoal. The huge charcoal operations eventually fed factories around the Northeast, and made Griffith fabulously wealthy.

Late in life, Silas Griffith began plans to donate a library to his home town of Danby. Photo from Vermont Historical Society

Just as he tried to squeeze maximum value out of natural resources, Griffith did the same with his employees. He forbade them to wear watches, not wanting anyone to claim they were being overworked. Workers not only didn’t get rich in Griffith’s employ, some fell into debt to him. According to one story, one day after a mill worker quit his job, Griffith supposedly intercepted the man and told him to remove his trousers, which he had purchased at the company store and hadn’t paid off yet.

But Griffith claimed that his employees loved their work. Griffith told a magazine writer: “(T)hey lead a life of excitement and, to them, one of pleasure. They go to work as early as it is light enough for them to see, and chop until dark…” He neglected to mention that the early start and long hours were demanded of them.

Like a real-life Scrooge, however, Griffith had a late-life change of heart. It is anyone’s guess what caused it. Perhaps it was the tragedies he experienced: Three of his children died young. Whatever the reason, Griffith decided to donate a library to Danby and started giving gifts and clothing to local children each Christmas. When he died, he left enough money to continue the tradition to this day. 

For all their wealth, neither Fisk or Green shared this interest in charity.


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