Featured on PDR in the collection Trimalchio in Newburyport: Timothy Dexter’s A Pickle for the Knowing Ones (1848)

“Never since the Flood has there lived a man so little appreciated as Timothy Dexter”, wrote a later biographer of this eccentric, eighteenth-century businessman. Born near Boston in 1747, Dexter began life as a leather dresser, earning his living by crafting garments with techniques disseminated from the Levant. He took a financial position in the success of American independence, wagering his wife Elizabeth Frothingham’s dowry by going long on depreciated Continental currency after the Revolutionary War (a strategy copied from John Hancock). With the debt-addressing measures introduced through Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan, Dexter’s notes were redeemed at par, making him a wealthy man almost overnight.