Hetty Green facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Hetty Green
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Green in 1897
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| Born |
Henrietta Howland Robinson
November 21, 1834 |
| Died | July 3, 1916 (aged 81) New York City, U.S.
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| Resting place | Immanuel Cemetery, Bellows Falls, Vermont, U.S. |
| Education | Eliza Wing School |
| Occupation | Financier |
| Known for | Financial prowess, miserly conduct |
| Spouse(s) |
Edward Henry Green
(m. 1867; died 1902) |
| Children | |
| Relatives | Sylvia Ann Howland (aunt) |
Hetty Green (November 21, 1834 – July 3, 1916), who was often derisively referred to as the Witch of Wall Street, was an American businesswoman and financier known as "the richest woman in America" during the Gilded Age. But those who knew her well referred to her admiringly as the Queen of Wall Street due to her willingness to lend freely and at reasonable interest rates to financiers and city governments during financial panics. Her extraordinary discipline during such times enabled her to amass a fortune as a financier at a time when nearly all major financiers were men. After her death, The New York Times acknowledged the common misconceptions about Hetty Green, stating, "It was the fact that Mrs. Green was a woman that made her career the subject of endless curiosity, comment and astonishment."
Nevertheless, most media reports from the era characterize her thrift as evidence of miserliness. She was even named by the Guinness Book of World Records the "greatest miser". Anecdotes included her refusal to buy expensive clothes or pay for hot water, and wearing a single dress that was only replaced when it was worn out. The historical record reveals that this was a gross mischaracterization of her life when viewed in its entirety.
Contents
Birth and early years
Henrietta ("Hetty") Howland Robinson was born in 1834 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, the daughter of Edward Mott Robinson and Abby Howland, the richest whaling family in the city. Her family members were Quakers who owned a large whaling fleet and also profited from the China trade. She had a younger brother who died as an infant.
At the age of two, Hetty was sent to live with her grandfather, Gideon Howland, and her Aunt Sylvia. Hetty would read the stock quotations and commerce reports for her grandfather and picked up some of his business methods. At the age of 10, Hetty entered Eliza Wing's boarding school in Sandwich. Hetty's father became the head of the Isaac Howland whaling firm upon Gideon's death, and Hetty began to emulate her father's business practices. Because of Gideon's influence and that of her father, and possibly because her mother was constantly ill, she was close to her father and was reading financial papers to him by the age of six. Hetty learned to read ledgers and trade commodities. When she was 13, Hetty became the family bookkeeper. Hetty accompanied her father to the countinghouses, storerooms, commodities traders, and stockbrokers. In the evening, she read him the news.
At the age of 15, Hetty enrolled for two summer sessions at the Friends Academy. Hetty also attended Anna Cabot Lowell's finishing school, and appeared as a debutante in 1854, before moving to New York to live with a cousin of her mother's, Henry Grinnell. Yet it was not long before Hetty returned to New Bedford, alternating between her father's house and her aunt's house. There, as Janet Wallach wrote, "by pursuing her father's interests she not only won his praise, she shared his pleasure in making money."
Her mother, Abby Robinson, died on February 21, 1860, at the age of 51, but her $100,000 estate went to her husband, except for an $8,000 (equivalent to $261,000 in 2022) house for Hetty. In June, Hetty's father sold off his interest in the whaling fleet and invested in William Tell Coleman's shipping firm, becoming a partner. While in New York, he also invested in government bonds, which paid 6% interest in gold. Back in New Bedford, Hetty's aunt Sylvia gave Hetty $20,000 (equivalent to $651,000 in 2022) in stocks as a gift. While staying with her father in New York, Hetty met her future husband, Edward Henry Green.
Edward Robinson died on June 14, 1865, leaving Hetty about $6 million (equivalent to $114,704,000 in 2022), which included $919,000 in cash, a warehouse in San Francisco, with the remainder in a trust fund from which she received the income. Yet she had no control over the principal.
Hetty's aunt Sylvia Ann Howland also died in 1865, soon after her father. In September 1863, Sylvia Howland had willed half of her $2 million estate (equivalent to $38,235,000 in 2022) to charities and entities in the town of New Bedford; the rest would be in a trust for Hetty, but once again without her control of the principal. By December, Hetty challenged the will's validity in court by producing an earlier will, made in January 1862, that left the entire estate to Hetty, and included a clause invalidating any subsequent wills. The executor of Howland's will, Thomas Mandell, rejected this earlier will, claiming it to be a forgery, and was challenged in court and the case, Robinson v. Mandell, which is notable as an early example of the forensic use of mathematics, was ultimately decided against Robinson after the court ruled that the clause invalidating future wills, and Sylvia's signature to it, were forgeries. After five years of legal battles, Hetty was awarded a settlement of $600,000 (equivalent to $13,885,000 in 2022).
Marriage
Edward Henry Green of Vermont learned the business trade in Boston before working in the Far East for the next 20 years. By the age of 44, he was a partner in Russell Styrgis & Company, and a millionaire. Yet Hetty's father stipulated in his will that Green would not inherit Hetty's money, which was to be "free from the debts, control or interference of any such husband."
On July 11, 1867, at the age of 33, Hetty married Edward Henry Green. She made him renounce all rights to her money before the wedding. The couple moved to his home in Manhattan. When her cousins tried to have her indicted for forgery based on the Robinson v. Mandell decision, the couple moved overseas to London, where they lived in the Langham Hotel. Their two children, Edward Howland Robinson Green (called Ned) and Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks (called Sylvia), were born in London: Ned on August 23, 1868, and Sylvia on January 7, 1871.
They separated in 1885, but remained married, and spent more time together in their later lives.
Investing career
Green followed a contrarian investing strategy, in her words, "I buy when things are low and nobody wants them. I keep them until they go up and people are crazy to get them. That is, I believe, the secret of all successful business." Green invested the interest from her father's trust fund, once again investing as her father had done, in Civil War bonds, which paid a high yield in gold, augmented by railroad stocks. Her annual profits during her first year in London amounted to $1.25 million, while the most she ever earned in a day was $200,000. Green went on to say, "I believe in getting in at the bottom and out on top. I like to buy railroad stocks or mortgage bonds. When I see a good thing going cheap because nobody wants it, I buy a lot of it and tuck it away." Hetty's discounted greenbacks, bought during the Civil War, were increased in value when Congress passed legislation in 1875 backing them with gold. As Hetty said of her investing philosophy, "Before deciding on an investment, I seek out every kind of information about it."
When the Green family returned to the United States in October 1873, after Edward suffered losses on Wall Street, they settled in Edward's hometown of Bellows Falls, Vermont. Hetty quarreled with Edward's mother until her death in 1875. That same year, Hetty covered Edward's losses associated with the London and San Francisco Bank, of which he was one of the directors. Hetty bailed Edward out once again in 1884.
After the 1885 collapse of the financial house John J. Cisco & Son, of which Edward was a partner, it was disclosed Edward had $700,000 in debt. Hetty Green's $500,000 represented one-quarter of the bank's assets. The bank refused to allow her transfer of her $26 million in stocks, bonds, mortgages, and deeds to the Chemical National Bank, until Edward's debt was paid. In the end, Hetty made the transfer and paid off her husband's debt, but never forgave Edward.
Green set up an office in the Chemical Bank, but continued to live in boarding houses, flats, or hotels. By then she was known as the "Queen of Wall Street." Her investing philosophy, in her words, included, "In business generally, don't close a bargain until you have reflected on it overnight." She also thought, "It is the duty of every woman, I believe, to learn to take care of her own business affairs," and "A girl should be brought up as to be able to make her own living..." "Whether rich or poor, a young woman should know how a bank account works, understand the composition of mortgages and bonds, and know the value of interest and how it accumulates."
The Panic of 1907 provided an opportunity for Green to showcase many of the investment skills that she had accumulated over several decades. Unlike most Wall Street financiers, Green predicted the panic long before its arrival. She explained her foresight, stating, “I saw this situation developing three years ago, and I am on record as predicting it. I said the rich were approaching the brink, and that a ‘panic’ was inevitable.“ For several years prior to the panic, Green amassed a large cash position. When the panic arrived in October 1907, Green lent liberally to financiers and the City of New York to get them through the crisis. She was also the only woman invited to the critical meeting with J. Pierpont Morgan and the leading banking executives at the height of the crisis.
Investment Strategy
Green conducted much of her business at the offices of the Seaboard National Bank in New York, surrounded by trunks and suitcases full of her papers; she did not want to pay rent for her own office. Possibly because of her usually dour dress (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps in part related to her Quaker upbringing), she was given the nickname "the Witch of Wall Street".
Green was a successful businesswoman who dealt mainly in real estate, invested in railroads and mines, and lent money while acquiring numerous mortgages. The City of New York came to Green for loans to keep the city afloat on several occasions, most particularly during the Panic of 1907; she wrote a check for $1.1 million and took her payment in short-term revenue bonds. Keenly detail-oriented, she would travel thousands of miles alone—in an era when few women would dare travel unescorted—to collect a debt of a few hundred dollars.
Ken Fisher discusses Green in his 2007 book 100 Minds That Made the Market. Fisher argues that despite her eccentricities, Green was in many ways a better investor than most of her early Wall Street contemporaries. Green clearly understood the power of compound interest, and her focus on regular modest gains of 6% a year and frugal living made her fortune more durable than the likes of Jesse Livermore who repeatedly earned larger sums on more extravagant deals but also went bankrupt through excessive spending and high-risk investments.
Reputation
Thrift
Hetty Green's thrift was legendary, but was often misunderstood. The Gilded Age was an era known for its excesses, and Hetty Green was among the few investors who chose not to partake. Nevertheless, journalists often presented her thriftiness as evidence of her miserliness, ignoring the fact that it was often a virtue and played an important role in her investing strategy. Examples of negative portrayals in the media included reports that she never turned on the heat or used hot water. She was also known for wearing a single black dress that she would not replace until it was thoroughly worn out. Moreover, she reportedly instructed her laundress to wash only the dirtiest parts of her dresses (the hems) to save money on soap. The most vicious accusation, however, was that she neglected to treat her son's injured leg, which eventually resulted in an amputation. The evidence cited is her refusal to pay for a visit to a single physician. But this accusation ignores substantial evidence that Hetty Green spared little expense and effort to treat her son. This included visits to multiple specialists, as well as temporarily relocating her residence so that she could care for him.
Hetty's personal perspective on thrift differed markedly from that of the public. There is considerable evidence that her frugality was passed down from her father, who was also a successful investor. She once explained her thrift by recounting an explanation offered by her father after he rejected an expensive cigar that was offered to him. He explained the decision by stating, “I smoke four cent cigars and I like them. If I were to smoke better ones, I might lose my taste for the cheap ones that I now find quite satisfactory.” Green's thrift also reflected her Quaker upbringing. When a reporter questioned why Hetty Green had spent so little time during a visit to an expensive hotel, she responded "Young man, I am a Quaker, and I am trying to live up to the tenets of that faith. That is why I dress plainly and live quietly. No other kind of life would please me." Finally, Green’s thrift was essential to her investment strategy, as it enabled her to buy assets confidently in the midst of financial panics because she knew that she could live on minimal living expenses. The importance of thrift to a value investor is a point that is often missed when evaluating Hetty Green’s life.
Media Portrayal
Green was often portrayed negatively in the media. Yet her investment strategy shunned the nefarious tactics that were commonly used by Wall Street speculators, such as Daniel Drew, Jay Gould, and Jim Fisk. She once commented on this misperception, stating "It has turned out...that my life is written for me down in Wall Street by people who, I assume, do not care to know one iota of the real Hetty Green. I am in earnest; therefore they picture as heartless. I go my own way, take no partners, risk nobody else's fortune, therefore I am Madame Ishmael, set against every man." In Green's words, "I don't think society means what some rich people would have us believe, I should get very tired of living in one of the great houses in New York, going out all night and sleeping all day. They don't have any real pleasure. It's intercourse with people that I like." Yet she was also a secret philanthropist, avoiding the attention of the press. In her words, "I believe in discreet charity." Hetty also had the reputation of being an effective nurse, caring for her young (apparently with the exception of her son Ned (see above)) and old neighbors. Her favorite poem was William Henry Channing's "My Symphony," which starts with "To live content with small means..."
Despite the strength of her ethics relative to her peers, Green entered the lexicon of turn-of-the-century America with the popular phrase "I'm not Hetty if I do look green." O. Henry used this phrase in his 1890s story "The Skylight Room" when a young woman, negotiating the rent on a room in a rooming house owned by an imperious old lady, wishes to make it clear she is neither as rich as she appears nor as naive.
Later life
As a young man, Ned Green moved away from his mother to manage the family's properties in Chicago and, later, Texas. In middle age, he returned to New York; his mother lived her final months with him.
Green's daughter Sylvia lived with her mother until her thirties. Green disapproved of all of her daughter's suitors, suspecting that they were after her fortune. Sylvia finally married Matthew Astor Wilks on February 23, 1909, after a two-year courtship. A minor heir to the Astor fortune, Wilks entered the marriage with $2 million of his own, enough to assure Green that he was not a gold digger. Nonetheless, she compelled him to sign a prenuptial agreement waiving his right to inherit Sylvia's fortune.
When her grown children left home, Green moved repeatedly among small apartments in Brooklyn Heights and after 1898, in Hoboken, New Jersey, mainly to avoid New York's property tax, though she did loan money to the city at reasonable rates. Hetty then regularly commuted to her office in the Chemical Bank on Broadway. By 1905, Hetty was New York's largest lender. Unsubstantiated rumors claimed that she ate only oatmeal, eggs, and onions, unheated so as not to increase her fuel bill.
In her old age, Green developed a hernia, but refused to have an operation, preferring to use a stick to press down the swelling. She eventually moved her office to the National Park Bank, when she thought she had been poisoned at the Chemical Bank, a fear she had most of her life.
Death
On July 3, 1916, Green died at age 81 at her son's New York City home. According to her longstanding "World's Greatest Miser" entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, she died of apoplexy after arguing with a maid over the virtues of skimmed milk. The New York Times reported she suffered a series of strokes leading up to her death.
Upon her death, Green was known as the "Wizard of Finance" and the "Richest Woman in America." Estimates of her net worth ranged from $100 million to $200 million (equivalent to $2.69 billion to $5.38 billion in 2024), making her arguably the richest woman in the world at the time.
Green was buried at the Immanuel Cemetery at the Immanuel Episcopal Church in Bellows Falls, Vermont, next to her husband. She had converted late in life to his Episcopalian faith so that she could be interred with him. Their two children split her estate, which included a ten-year trust for Sylvia administered by Ned. They were reported to have enjoyed their wealth more than she had. Both came through the Great Depression relatively unscathed by following Hetty's philosophy of conservative buying backed by substantial cash reserves. Ned was an accomplished collector with interests in everything from auto racing to science to horticulture. He willed his estate to his sister Sylvia, who in 1948 donated his Round Hill, Massachusetts, estate to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which used the property for experiments. These included a prototype particle accelerator. They used his powerful WMAF radio transmitters to keep in touch with Richard E. Byrd's 1928–1930 Antarctic expedition.
Sylvia Green died in 1951, leaving an estimated $200 million and donating all but $1,388,000 to 64 colleges, churches, hospitals, and other charities. Both children were buried near their parents in Bellows Falls.
Legacy
The She-Wolf (1931) and You Can't Buy Everything (1934) was the story of a miserly billionaire businesswoman based on Green. She was played by Australian-born actress May Robson.
Green's former mansion in Englewood, New Jersey was purchased by the Actors Fund in 1928 and currently houses the Lillian Booth Actors Home.
Sylvia Wilks had no heirs and her fortune was distributed to 64 different charities. A partial list of institutions that received distributions is provided below.
1. The Academy of St. Joseph (New York)2. American Red Cross (Washington, DC) 3. American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (New York) 4. The Blair Academy (New Jersey) 5. Christ Church (Connecticut) 6. City of New Bedford (Wilks) Library (Massachusetts) 7. Columbia University (New York) 8. Fire Department’s Honor Emergency Fund (New York) 9. Fordham University (New York) 10. The General Theological Seminary (New York) 11. The Girl Scouts of America (New York) 12. The Groton School (Connecticut) 13. Harvard College (Massachusetts) 14. Immanuel Episcopal Church (Vermont) 15. Institute for Crippled and Disabled (New York) 16. The Johns Hopkins University and Hospital (Maryland) 17. The Kent School (Connecticut) 18. Lenox Hill Hospital (New York) 19. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts) 20. Middlebury College (Vermont) 21. New York Society Library (New York) 22. New York University (New York) 23. NYU Bellevue Medical Center (New York) 24. Sheltering Arms Children’s Service (New York) 25. Stevens Institute of Technology (New Jersey) 26. St. Bartholomew’s Church (New York) 27. St. George’s Church (New York) 28. St. Ann’s Protestant Episcopal Church (New York) 29. St. Luke’s Home for Aged Women (New York) 30. St. Luke’s Hospital (Massachusetts) 31. St. James Church (New York) 32. St. Paul’s School (New Hampshire) 33. St. Peter’s Protestant Episcopal Church (New Jersey) 34. Vassar College (New York) 35. Yale University (Connecticut)
See also
In Spanish: Hetty Green para niños
- Business magnate
- Collyer brothers, New York City misers and hoarders
- Countess Annie Leary
