Hetty (37 page)

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A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2004 by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

HETTY
. Copyright © 2004 by Charles Slack.

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EPub Edition © JULY 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-03811-1

FIRST HARPER PERENNIAL EDITION PUBLISHED
2005.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows: Slack, Charles.

Hetty: the genius and madness of America’s first female tycoon/Charles Slack.
p.  cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-06-054256-X
1. Green, Hetty Howland Robinson, 1835–1916. 2. Women capitalists and financiers—United States—Biography. 3. Millionaires—United States-Biography. I. Title: America’s first female tycoon. II. Title.

HG2463.G74S57  2004
332
’.O92
2—dc22
[B]  2004042055

ISBN-10: 0-06-054257-8 (pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-054257-3 (pbk.)

05 06 07 08 09
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*
Hetty has sometimes been called “Henrietta,” under the assumption that Hetty is akin to Bob for Robert. After Hetty’s death, family genealogist William Emery asked her son, Ned, for clarification and was told her name “absolutely and positively was Hetty and nothing else”
(New Bedford
Mercury, February 22, 1938).

*
One of the most delightful Hetty stories, perhaps apocryphal, concerns an Englishman passing through Bellows Falls who was supposedly chased by a cow on her property. The man knocked on Hetty’s door to complain and, not getting the apologetic reaction he wanted, reeled off his impressive-sounding title. Hetty said, “Tell it to the cow.”

*
This vignette is preserved in an old newspaper clipping on file at the Kendall Institute, New Bedford, Massachusetts. The clipping does not identify the newspaper or the date.

*
The term “watered stock” came originally from a deception of a different sort—during the 1830s, cattle baron Daniel Drew kept his animals thirsty, then allowed them to gorge on water just before reaching the market scales. In the new economy, watered stock referred to radically overvalued shares.

*
In 1956, MIT donated the two-story-tall generator to Boston’s Museum of Science, where it has been on prominent display for decades.