Timothy Dexter (January 22, 1747 – October 23, 1806) was an American businessman noted for his writing and eccentricity. Biography Dexter was born in Malden in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He had little schooling and dropped out of school to work as a farm laborer at the age of eight. 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. At the end of the American Revolutionary War, he purchased large amounts of depreciated Continental currency that was worthless at the time. At the war's end, the U.S. government made good on its notes at one percent of face value, while Massachusetts paid its own notes at par. His investment enabled him to amass a considerable profit. He built two ships and began an export business to the West Indies and Europe. Because he was largely uneducated, his business sense was considered peculiar. He was advised to send bed warmers—used to heat beds in the cold New England winters—for resale in the West Indies, a tropical area. This advice was a deliberate ploy by rivals to bankrupt him. His ship's captain sold them as ladles to the local molasses industry and made a handsome profit. Next, Dexter sent wool mittens to the same place, where Asian merchants bought them for export to Siberia. People jokingly told him to "ship coal to Newcastle". Fortuitously, he did so during a Newcastle miners' strike, and his cargo was sold at a premium. 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. He exported Bibles to the East Indies and stray cats to Caribbean islands and again made a profit; Eastern missionaries were in need of the Bibles and the Caribbean welcomed a solution to rat infestation. He also hoarded whalebones by mistake, but ended up selling them profitably as corset stays. While subject to ridicule, Dexter's boasting makes it clear that he understood the value of cornering the market on goods that others did not see as valuable and the utility of "acting the fool". New England high society snubbed him. Dexter bought a large house in Newburyport from Nathaniel Tracy,