Hetty Green (November 21, 1834 – July 3, 1916), nicknamed the Witch of Wall Street, was an American businesswoman and financier known as "the richest woman in America" during the Gilded Age. She was named by the Guinness Book of World Records the "greatest miser". Despite her wealth, she was a renowned cheapskate, refusing to buy expensive clothes or pay for hot water, and wearing a single dress that was only replaced when it was worn out. She amassed a fortune as a financier at a time when nearly all major financiers were men. After her death, The New York Times wrote, "It was the fact that Mrs. Green was a woman that made her career the subject of endless curiosity, comment and astonishment." 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