Mrs. Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks::;
She is direct kin, also as my FIL G.C. Di Spirito had the last laughs!.
Born American in London, England. Sylvia on January 7, 1871 as her brother Ned on August 23, 1868 was before her.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
They had been living at the fabulous/famous Langham Hotel. It is in the district of Marylebone on Langham Place and faces up Portland Place towards Regent's Park. Langham was built between 1863 and 1865 at a cost of £300,000. It was then the largest and most modern hotel in the city, featuring a hundred water closets (W.C.), thirty six bathrooms and the first hydraulic lifts ever in England. The opening ceremony was performed by the Prince of Wales. After the original company was liquidated during an economic slump, new management acquired the hotel for little more than half what it had cost to build, and it soon became a commercial success. In 1870, a former Union officer named James Sanderson was appointed general manager and the hotel developed an extensive American clientele, which included Mark Twain and the wealhiest woman in the world, multi-millionairess, Mrs.Hetty Green. It was also patronised by the likes of Napoleon III, Oscar Wilde, Antonín Dvořák, and Arturo Toscanini. Thomas Alva Edison Electric lights later were installed in the entrance and courtyard at the exceptionally early date of 1879, and Arthur Conan Doyle set Sherlock Holmes stories such as A Scandal in Bohemia and The Sign of Four partly at the Langham.
Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London,England located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone (or, archaically, Mary-le-bone).
When Sylvia, her husband, and children lived in London, Marylebone John Harvey Lewis (1814 - 23 October 1888)He was elected (MP) Member of Parliament for Marylebone at a by-election in April 1861. He held the seat until 1874.He was described as "in favor (favour) of the principle of non-intervention and opposed to the present pressure that the income-tax has upon professional men and traders."
...........................................................
Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks (1871 - February 5, 1951) was the only daughter of Mrs. Hetty Potter Howland Robinson Green and the sister of Edward Howland Robinson Green (1868-1936). She dressed completely in black just like her Quaker mother Hetty. She married Matthew Astor Wilks (1844-1926) in February, 23rd 1909 in Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey near the Tempe Wick House.
Sylvia lived with Hetty until her thirties. Hetty disapproved of all of Sylvia's suitors because she suspected they wanted only to get their hands on her money. When Green finally let Matthew Astor Wilks marry Sylvia on February 23, 1909, after a two-year courtship, the groom waived his right to inherit Sylvia's fortune, and received US$5,000 for signing this prenuptial agreement. (Wilks, a minor heir to the Astor fortune, entered the marriage with US$2,000,000 of his own, enough to assure Hetty that he was not a gold digger.)
Sylvia Green Wilks lived in New York City, New York. Shortly after the death of her husband in 1926 (after fifteen years of marriage), she moved from her house at 440 Madison Avenue to 988 Fifth Avenue into two lower-floor apartments, using the third floor for her home and the fourth floor to store her excess furniture.
THE imposing limestone apartment house at 998 Fifth Avenue, at 81st Street, is one of the most majestic ever built in New York, or even in the United States. Completed in 1912 and designed by McKim, Mead & White for the developer James T. Lee, grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the building counted among its most interesting attributes a broad iron and glass marquee over the 81st Street entrance. The limestone, Italian Renaissance style structure housed wealthy residents that included Murray Guggenheim and Sylvia Wilks.In 1909, Lee and Charles R. Fleischmann bought the northeast corner of 81st and Fifth from the financier August Belmont, who had contemplated building his own mansion there. Lee hired the firm of McKim, Mead & White, which designed many of New York's grandest buildings, ranging from the Metropolitan Club at 60th and Fifth to the old Penn Station.
Residential Fifth Avenue had seen a few apartment buildings by 1910, but nothing like the 12-story 998 Fifth Avenue. McKim, Mead & White developed an all-limestone exterior in the Italian Renaissance style -- the exterior, for its time, looked more like a bank or a private club. Lee had the vision to combine the sensible efficiencies of a multiple dwelling with the scale of a country house, using an architectural language understood by families with housing budgets measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When her brother "Ned" died in 1937, she inherited almost all of her brother's estate. Reclusive and eccentric Sylvia Green Wilks died in 1951, leaving an estate of $90 million after taxes, almost all of it was distributed to schools, hospitals and charities. Hetty Green, the woman who loved money, had been avenged: her daughter gave it all away to strangers.
When her bother died in 1937, she inherited his estate, rather than his wife.[1] She died on February 5, 1951 and left an estate of $94,965,229.
Time Magazine May, 1937:
"A surprise witness at the first session was tall, sharp-nosed, bespectacled Mrs. Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks, 66, whose right to her brother's fortune by terms of a will drawn nine years before his marriage has been challenged by the Brothers Colonel Green's widow ( a harlet), redheaded Mrs. Mabel E. Harlow Green, 66. Dressed completely in black as was the habit of her Quaker mother, Mrs. Hetty Green, the "Witch of Wall Street." rich old Mrs. Wilks sparred verbally with solemn-faced Lawyer Isaac A. Pennypacker, who questioned her on behalf of Widow Green."
L.A. Times 02/07/1951 and 09/27/1952
"The estate of Mrs. Hetty Sylvia Howland Green Wilks, who died Feb. 5, 1951, totaled $94,965,229 gross and $90,845,301 net, according to an estate tax appraisal filed yesterday."
She died donating all but US $1,388,000 of it to our families, 64 charities, including colleges, churches, and hospitals.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Her Parents::
DAD:
Edward Henry Green
BORN:February the 6th, 1821
Bellows Falls, Windham County, Vermont, US
Death:March the 19th, 1902
Bellows Falls,Windham County,Vermont, US
MOM:
Henrietta Howland Potter "Hetty" Robinson
BORN:November the 21st, 1834
New Bedford,Bristol County, Massachusetts, US
Death:July the 3rd, 1916
Manhattan Island, New York County,New York, US
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Her Mother Henrietta Howland Robinson was known as "the richest woman in America" and/oror "the richest woman in the world." Therein lay the real reason a lot of men thought she was a witch. She'd inherited almost $7 million from her father and her aunt in 1865. That was a great fortune, comparable to a hundred million in the buying power of today's currency (there was little or no inflation, save for the time of the Civil War, from 1800 to 1929). Between the ages of 31, when she inherited, and fifty years later, when she died, she single-handedly (and really single-handedly because she trusted no one with her money) turned that into almost $200 million (or approximately $19 billion in (a.d. 2014) today's US currency).
In typical Quaker and new England frugality:
She had been a goodlooking young woman. By age 20, attempts were made to present her to society both in Boston and New York City. Her father gave her a wardrobe worth $1200 ($98,000 in today's US currency), but she sold all the clothes and invested the money in the stock market. She relied on an unwitting cousin she was staying with in New York City to buy her what she needed.
Not long before her father died, Hetty became engaged to a man 14 years her senior named Edward Green, an affable businessman from Bellows Falls, Vermont, who'd made his money in the Philippine silk trade. In 1867, two years after the death of her father, and during her fight for her aunt's estate, Hetty married Green.
In London, England she gave birth to her first child, a son named Edward Howland Robinson Green, later known as Ned. Three years later in 1870 London, England, she again gave birth to a wonderful daughter named Hetty Sylvia Ann Howland Robinson Green, known forever after as Sylvia.
Coincidentally, her maiden aunt Miss Sylvia Howland, the richest lady in New Bedford, Massachusetts and New England was talking about re-doing her will and leaving the bulk of her estate to friends, relatives, and charity, and not to Hetty. Alarmed at the prospect, Hetty went to work on auntie, extracting her promise that she would never, ever, change her will (leaving everything to Hetty).Coincidentally that same year Hetty's father also died, leaving her $1 million outright and the income from a $5 million trust. She was 31 years old.
But gibes at Hetty were also an elaborate male deflection of the remarkable truth: when the Big Boys needed cash, and quick, Hetty Green was a major source who came to the rescue. By that time in her financial career, she had increased her fortune six or seven times. She kept $20 million to $40 million (think a half billion in today's terms) in cash at all times for quick loans. More than once the City of New York, New York called on her to keep the city solvent. Hetty Green was one of the lenders in J.P. Morgan's emergency operation to save the banks during the Panic of 1907, writing out a check for $1.1 million (55 times that in today's marketplace). For payment she took short-term revenue bonds.
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 an office. Possibly because of the stiff competition of the mostly male business environment and partly because of her usually dour dress sense (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps ascribable in part to her New England frugal Quaker upbringing).
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.
Hetty kept her children close to the nest and demanded they practice the same Quaker/New England frugality. Sylvia, however, brought out Hetty's maternal instincts. It was for Sylvia that she left Hoboken, Hudson County, New Jersey for a few days in 1908, taking rooms in the newly opened Plaza Hotel, to give her daughter a fine dinner. She wanted Sylvia to find a husband, which she finally did, in Matthew Astor Wilks, a great-grandson of John Jacob Astor I, Americas first Multi-Millionaire. Wilks was at least 25 years older than his fiancée. Hetty gave her daughter a proper wedding, which took place the following year in Morristown, Morris County New Jersey which was an exquisite and much news worthy and society event.
On July 3, 1916, just a few months short of her 82nd birthday, Hetty Green died in her son's house on West 91 Street, NYC, NY. Her estate was estimated to be close to $200 million at the time – or an estimated $19 billion in 2014 today's dollars. (J.P. Morgan's estate at the time of his death three years before was approximately $80 million.) She had spent her entire life in pursuit of making money. She bought nothing for herself or her children. She gave nothing away. She just watched her fortune grow and grow using her re-investment , another financial markets first.Her beloved little dog Curtis, whose name she sometimes used on her front door to throw tax agents off her tail/trail.
Her death as a matter of fact, she suffered a series of strokes since April 17 of that year (the date of the argument with an intemperate cook in the employ of her lifelong friend Annie Leary).
She was buried in Bellows Falls, Vermont, next to her late husband, having converted late in life to his Episcopalian faith so they could be interred together also the Tombstone was already paid for was the main reason. Quakers do not believe in Tomb Stones/Gravestones.
She left the World and all America with the popular phrase, "I'm not Hetty if I do look green;" this phrase is quoted in O. Henry's 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.
============================================================
Her Dad::
Edward Henry Green:
When the Green family returned to the United States, they went to Edward's hometown in Bellows Falls, Vermont. Already , she began to quarrel, not only with her husband and in-laws, but also with the domestic servants. After the 1885 collapse of the financial house John J. Cisco & Son, in which Hetty was the largest investor, investigation revealed that Edward had not only been the firm's greatest debtor, but that management of the firm had surreptitiously used Hetty's wealth as the basis for their loans to Edward. Hetty, emphasizing that their finances were separate, withdrew her securities and deposited them in Chemical Bank. Edward moved out of their home. In later years, however, they would effect at least a partial reconciliation, and Hetty helped nurse him in the years before his death on March 19, 1902, from heart disease and chronic nephritis. He was buried in Bellows Falls in the graveyard of Immanuel Church.
1881, Mr. Green, who was a speculator in the stock markets, had lost most of his $2 million fortune. That was it for him, as far as Hetty was concerned. She refused to assist in maintaining the household, and decided to move herself and her two children to New York where she could be closer to business.
The stock market had become only a minor interest in his wifes financial affairs. Her main businesses were buying mortgages (she especially liked holding mortgages on churches and didn't mind foreclosing when they couldn't keep up their payments), and lending money to bankers and brokerage houses. Hetty was a woman a century ahead of her time. Today she would have been the hedge funds and private equity managers' darling.
============================================================
GRANDPARENTS::
DAD:
GRANDADDY:Edward Atkinson Green
Born: September the 5th, 1792
Wendell, Massachusetts, US to Joshua Green and Mary Moseley. Edward Atkinson married Anna Amory Tucker and had 2 children.
He passed away on 29 Nov 1863 in Bellows Falls, Vermont, US.
Grandmother:Anna Amory Tucker
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, US on 14th of May,1803 to Nathaniel Tucker and Catherine Hay Geyer. Anna Amory married Edward Atkinson Green and had 2 children. She passed away on 1875 in Rockingham, Vermont, US
CHILDREN:
Edward Henry Green 1821-1902
Henrienna Green 1831-1907
Born in New York, New York, USA on 21 Jun 1831 to Edward Atkinson Green and Anna Amory Tucker. Henrienna married John Jay Elmendorf and had 10 children. She passed away on 15th of May 1907 in New York City, New York, US
MOM:
Grandaddy: Edward Mott Robinson
BORN: January the 8th, 1800
Death: June the 14th, 1865
GREAT GRANDADDY:James Robinson
Born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, US on 1756 to Sylvester Robinson and Alice Perry. James married Mary Attmore and had 8 children. He passed away on 1841.
Family Members:
Parents
Sylvester Robinson 1735-1809
Alice Perry 1736-1787
Spouse:
Mary Attmore 1771-1866
CHILDREN:
William Attmore Robinson 1797-Unknown
Edward Mott Robinson 1809-1865
Anna Attmore Robinson 1801-1876
Attmore Robinson 1804-Unknown
Sarah Robinson 1804-1804
Rowland Robinson 1806-1819
Sylvester C. Robinson 1809-1883
Attmore Robinson 1816-Unknown
Grandmother:Mrs. Abby Slocum Howland Robinson
BORN:March the 20th, 1809
New Bedford, Bristol County, Massachusetts, US
Death: Feb. 21, 1860, US
Her Great Granddaddy :Gideon Howland
Born in Dartmouth, Massachusetts on 1770 to Gideon Howland and Sarah Hicks. Gideon married Mehitable Howland and had 3 children. He passed away on 2 Sep 1847.
His Spouse(s)Her Great Grandmother
Mehitable Howland 1777-1809
CHILDREN:
Abigail Howland 1790-1860
Sylvia Ann Howland 1806-1864
Abby Slocum Howland 1809-1860
She is direct kin, also as my FIL G.C. Di Spirito had the last laughs!.
Born American in London, England. Sylvia on January 7, 1871 as her brother Ned on August 23, 1868 was before her.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
They had been living at the fabulous/famous Langham Hotel. It is in the district of Marylebone on Langham Place and faces up Portland Place towards Regent's Park. Langham was built between 1863 and 1865 at a cost of £300,000. It was then the largest and most modern hotel in the city, featuring a hundred water closets (W.C.), thirty six bathrooms and the first hydraulic lifts ever in England. The opening ceremony was performed by the Prince of Wales. After the original company was liquidated during an economic slump, new management acquired the hotel for little more than half what it had cost to build, and it soon became a commercial success. In 1870, a former Union officer named James Sanderson was appointed general manager and the hotel developed an extensive American clientele, which included Mark Twain and the wealhiest woman in the world, multi-millionairess, Mrs.Hetty Green. It was also patronised by the likes of Napoleon III, Oscar Wilde, Antonín Dvořák, and Arturo Toscanini. Thomas Alva Edison Electric lights later were installed in the entrance and courtyard at the exceptionally early date of 1879, and Arthur Conan Doyle set Sherlock Holmes stories such as A Scandal in Bohemia and The Sign of Four partly at the Langham.
Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London,England located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone (or, archaically, Mary-le-bone).
When Sylvia, her husband, and children lived in London, Marylebone John Harvey Lewis (1814 - 23 October 1888)He was elected (MP) Member of Parliament for Marylebone at a by-election in April 1861. He held the seat until 1874.He was described as "in favor (favour) of the principle of non-intervention and opposed to the present pressure that the income-tax has upon professional men and traders."
...........................................................
Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks (1871 - February 5, 1951) was the only daughter of Mrs. Hetty Potter Howland Robinson Green and the sister of Edward Howland Robinson Green (1868-1936). She dressed completely in black just like her Quaker mother Hetty. She married Matthew Astor Wilks (1844-1926) in February, 23rd 1909 in Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey near the Tempe Wick House.
Sylvia lived with Hetty until her thirties. Hetty disapproved of all of Sylvia's suitors because she suspected they wanted only to get their hands on her money. When Green finally let Matthew Astor Wilks marry Sylvia on February 23, 1909, after a two-year courtship, the groom waived his right to inherit Sylvia's fortune, and received US$5,000 for signing this prenuptial agreement. (Wilks, a minor heir to the Astor fortune, entered the marriage with US$2,000,000 of his own, enough to assure Hetty that he was not a gold digger.)
Sylvia Green Wilks lived in New York City, New York. Shortly after the death of her husband in 1926 (after fifteen years of marriage), she moved from her house at 440 Madison Avenue to 988 Fifth Avenue into two lower-floor apartments, using the third floor for her home and the fourth floor to store her excess furniture.
THE imposing limestone apartment house at 998 Fifth Avenue, at 81st Street, is one of the most majestic ever built in New York, or even in the United States. Completed in 1912 and designed by McKim, Mead & White for the developer James T. Lee, grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the building counted among its most interesting attributes a broad iron and glass marquee over the 81st Street entrance. The limestone, Italian Renaissance style structure housed wealthy residents that included Murray Guggenheim and Sylvia Wilks.In 1909, Lee and Charles R. Fleischmann bought the northeast corner of 81st and Fifth from the financier August Belmont, who had contemplated building his own mansion there. Lee hired the firm of McKim, Mead & White, which designed many of New York's grandest buildings, ranging from the Metropolitan Club at 60th and Fifth to the old Penn Station.
Residential Fifth Avenue had seen a few apartment buildings by 1910, but nothing like the 12-story 998 Fifth Avenue. McKim, Mead & White developed an all-limestone exterior in the Italian Renaissance style -- the exterior, for its time, looked more like a bank or a private club. Lee had the vision to combine the sensible efficiencies of a multiple dwelling with the scale of a country house, using an architectural language understood by families with housing budgets measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When her brother "Ned" died in 1937, she inherited almost all of her brother's estate. Reclusive and eccentric Sylvia Green Wilks died in 1951, leaving an estate of $90 million after taxes, almost all of it was distributed to schools, hospitals and charities. Hetty Green, the woman who loved money, had been avenged: her daughter gave it all away to strangers.
When her bother died in 1937, she inherited his estate, rather than his wife.[1] She died on February 5, 1951 and left an estate of $94,965,229.
Time Magazine May, 1937:
"A surprise witness at the first session was tall, sharp-nosed, bespectacled Mrs. Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks, 66, whose right to her brother's fortune by terms of a will drawn nine years before his marriage has been challenged by the Brothers Colonel Green's widow ( a harlet), redheaded Mrs. Mabel E. Harlow Green, 66. Dressed completely in black as was the habit of her Quaker mother, Mrs. Hetty Green, the "Witch of Wall Street." rich old Mrs. Wilks sparred verbally with solemn-faced Lawyer Isaac A. Pennypacker, who questioned her on behalf of Widow Green."
L.A. Times 02/07/1951 and 09/27/1952
"The estate of Mrs. Hetty Sylvia Howland Green Wilks, who died Feb. 5, 1951, totaled $94,965,229 gross and $90,845,301 net, according to an estate tax appraisal filed yesterday."
She died donating all but US $1,388,000 of it to our families, 64 charities, including colleges, churches, and hospitals.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Her Parents::
DAD:
Edward Henry Green
BORN:February the 6th, 1821
Bellows Falls, Windham County, Vermont, US
Death:March the 19th, 1902
Bellows Falls,Windham County,Vermont, US
MOM:
Henrietta Howland Potter "Hetty" Robinson
BORN:November the 21st, 1834
New Bedford,Bristol County, Massachusetts, US
Death:July the 3rd, 1916
Manhattan Island, New York County,New York, US
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Her Mother Henrietta Howland Robinson was known as "the richest woman in America" and/oror "the richest woman in the world." Therein lay the real reason a lot of men thought she was a witch. She'd inherited almost $7 million from her father and her aunt in 1865. That was a great fortune, comparable to a hundred million in the buying power of today's currency (there was little or no inflation, save for the time of the Civil War, from 1800 to 1929). Between the ages of 31, when she inherited, and fifty years later, when she died, she single-handedly (and really single-handedly because she trusted no one with her money) turned that into almost $200 million (or approximately $19 billion in (a.d. 2014) today's US currency).
In typical Quaker and new England frugality:
She had been a goodlooking young woman. By age 20, attempts were made to present her to society both in Boston and New York City. Her father gave her a wardrobe worth $1200 ($98,000 in today's US currency), but she sold all the clothes and invested the money in the stock market. She relied on an unwitting cousin she was staying with in New York City to buy her what she needed.
Not long before her father died, Hetty became engaged to a man 14 years her senior named Edward Green, an affable businessman from Bellows Falls, Vermont, who'd made his money in the Philippine silk trade. In 1867, two years after the death of her father, and during her fight for her aunt's estate, Hetty married Green.
In London, England she gave birth to her first child, a son named Edward Howland Robinson Green, later known as Ned. Three years later in 1870 London, England, she again gave birth to a wonderful daughter named Hetty Sylvia Ann Howland Robinson Green, known forever after as Sylvia.
Coincidentally, her maiden aunt Miss Sylvia Howland, the richest lady in New Bedford, Massachusetts and New England was talking about re-doing her will and leaving the bulk of her estate to friends, relatives, and charity, and not to Hetty. Alarmed at the prospect, Hetty went to work on auntie, extracting her promise that she would never, ever, change her will (leaving everything to Hetty).Coincidentally that same year Hetty's father also died, leaving her $1 million outright and the income from a $5 million trust. She was 31 years old.
But gibes at Hetty were also an elaborate male deflection of the remarkable truth: when the Big Boys needed cash, and quick, Hetty Green was a major source who came to the rescue. By that time in her financial career, she had increased her fortune six or seven times. She kept $20 million to $40 million (think a half billion in today's terms) in cash at all times for quick loans. More than once the City of New York, New York called on her to keep the city solvent. Hetty Green was one of the lenders in J.P. Morgan's emergency operation to save the banks during the Panic of 1907, writing out a check for $1.1 million (55 times that in today's marketplace). For payment she took short-term revenue bonds.
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 an office. Possibly because of the stiff competition of the mostly male business environment and partly because of her usually dour dress sense (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps ascribable in part to her New England frugal Quaker upbringing).
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.
Hetty kept her children close to the nest and demanded they practice the same Quaker/New England frugality. Sylvia, however, brought out Hetty's maternal instincts. It was for Sylvia that she left Hoboken, Hudson County, New Jersey for a few days in 1908, taking rooms in the newly opened Plaza Hotel, to give her daughter a fine dinner. She wanted Sylvia to find a husband, which she finally did, in Matthew Astor Wilks, a great-grandson of John Jacob Astor I, Americas first Multi-Millionaire. Wilks was at least 25 years older than his fiancée. Hetty gave her daughter a proper wedding, which took place the following year in Morristown, Morris County New Jersey which was an exquisite and much news worthy and society event.
On July 3, 1916, just a few months short of her 82nd birthday, Hetty Green died in her son's house on West 91 Street, NYC, NY. Her estate was estimated to be close to $200 million at the time – or an estimated $19 billion in 2014 today's dollars. (J.P. Morgan's estate at the time of his death three years before was approximately $80 million.) She had spent her entire life in pursuit of making money. She bought nothing for herself or her children. She gave nothing away. She just watched her fortune grow and grow using her re-investment , another financial markets first.Her beloved little dog Curtis, whose name she sometimes used on her front door to throw tax agents off her tail/trail.
Her death as a matter of fact, she suffered a series of strokes since April 17 of that year (the date of the argument with an intemperate cook in the employ of her lifelong friend Annie Leary).
She was buried in Bellows Falls, Vermont, next to her late husband, having converted late in life to his Episcopalian faith so they could be interred together also the Tombstone was already paid for was the main reason. Quakers do not believe in Tomb Stones/Gravestones.
She left the World and all America with the popular phrase, "I'm not Hetty if I do look green;" this phrase is quoted in O. Henry's 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.
============================================================
Her Dad::
Edward Henry Green:
When the Green family returned to the United States, they went to Edward's hometown in Bellows Falls, Vermont. Already , she began to quarrel, not only with her husband and in-laws, but also with the domestic servants. After the 1885 collapse of the financial house John J. Cisco & Son, in which Hetty was the largest investor, investigation revealed that Edward had not only been the firm's greatest debtor, but that management of the firm had surreptitiously used Hetty's wealth as the basis for their loans to Edward. Hetty, emphasizing that their finances were separate, withdrew her securities and deposited them in Chemical Bank. Edward moved out of their home. In later years, however, they would effect at least a partial reconciliation, and Hetty helped nurse him in the years before his death on March 19, 1902, from heart disease and chronic nephritis. He was buried in Bellows Falls in the graveyard of Immanuel Church.
1881, Mr. Green, who was a speculator in the stock markets, had lost most of his $2 million fortune. That was it for him, as far as Hetty was concerned. She refused to assist in maintaining the household, and decided to move herself and her two children to New York where she could be closer to business.
The stock market had become only a minor interest in his wifes financial affairs. Her main businesses were buying mortgages (she especially liked holding mortgages on churches and didn't mind foreclosing when they couldn't keep up their payments), and lending money to bankers and brokerage houses. Hetty was a woman a century ahead of her time. Today she would have been the hedge funds and private equity managers' darling.
============================================================
GRANDPARENTS::
DAD:
GRANDADDY:Edward Atkinson Green
Born: September the 5th, 1792
Wendell, Massachusetts, US to Joshua Green and Mary Moseley. Edward Atkinson married Anna Amory Tucker and had 2 children.
He passed away on 29 Nov 1863 in Bellows Falls, Vermont, US.
Grandmother:Anna Amory Tucker
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, US on 14th of May,1803 to Nathaniel Tucker and Catherine Hay Geyer. Anna Amory married Edward Atkinson Green and had 2 children. She passed away on 1875 in Rockingham, Vermont, US
CHILDREN:
Edward Henry Green 1821-1902
Henrienna Green 1831-1907
Born in New York, New York, USA on 21 Jun 1831 to Edward Atkinson Green and Anna Amory Tucker. Henrienna married John Jay Elmendorf and had 10 children. She passed away on 15th of May 1907 in New York City, New York, US
MOM:
Grandaddy: Edward Mott Robinson
BORN: January the 8th, 1800
Death: June the 14th, 1865
GREAT GRANDADDY:James Robinson
Born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, US on 1756 to Sylvester Robinson and Alice Perry. James married Mary Attmore and had 8 children. He passed away on 1841.
Family Members:
Parents
Sylvester Robinson 1735-1809
Alice Perry 1736-1787
Spouse:
Mary Attmore 1771-1866
CHILDREN:
William Attmore Robinson 1797-Unknown
Edward Mott Robinson 1809-1865
Anna Attmore Robinson 1801-1876
Attmore Robinson 1804-Unknown
Sarah Robinson 1804-1804
Rowland Robinson 1806-1819
Sylvester C. Robinson 1809-1883
Attmore Robinson 1816-Unknown
Grandmother:Mrs. Abby Slocum Howland Robinson
BORN:March the 20th, 1809
New Bedford, Bristol County, Massachusetts, US
Death: Feb. 21, 1860, US
Her Great Granddaddy :Gideon Howland
Born in Dartmouth, Massachusetts on 1770 to Gideon Howland and Sarah Hicks. Gideon married Mehitable Howland and had 3 children. He passed away on 2 Sep 1847.
His Spouse(s)Her Great Grandmother
Mehitable Howland 1777-1809
CHILDREN:
Abigail Howland 1790-1860
Sylvia Ann Howland 1806-1864
Abby Slocum Howland 1809-1860
Mrs. Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks::;
She is direct kin, also as my FIL G.C. Di Spirito had the last laughs!.
Born American in London, England. Sylvia on January 7, 1871 as her brother Ned on August 23, 1868 was before her.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
They had been living at the fabulous/famous Langham Hotel. It is in the district of Marylebone on Langham Place and faces up Portland Place towards Regent's Park. Langham was built between 1863 and 1865 at a cost of £300,000. It was then the largest and most modern hotel in the city, featuring a hundred water closets (W.C.), thirty six bathrooms and the first hydraulic lifts ever in England. The opening ceremony was performed by the Prince of Wales. After the original company was liquidated during an economic slump, new management acquired the hotel for little more than half what it had cost to build, and it soon became a commercial success. In 1870, a former Union officer named James Sanderson was appointed general manager and the hotel developed an extensive American clientele, which included Mark Twain and the wealhiest woman in the world, multi-millionairess, Mrs.Hetty Green. It was also patronised by the likes of Napoleon III, Oscar Wilde, Antonín Dvořák, and Arturo Toscanini. Thomas Alva Edison Electric lights later were installed in the entrance and courtyard at the exceptionally early date of 1879, and Arthur Conan Doyle set Sherlock Holmes stories such as A Scandal in Bohemia and The Sign of Four partly at the Langham.
Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London,England located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone (or, archaically, Mary-le-bone).
When Sylvia, her husband, and children lived in London, Marylebone John Harvey Lewis (1814 - 23 October 1888)He was elected (MP) Member of Parliament for Marylebone at a by-election in April 1861. He held the seat until 1874.He was described as "in favor (favour) of the principle of non-intervention and opposed to the present pressure that the income-tax has upon professional men and traders."
...........................................................
Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks (1871 - February 5, 1951) was the only daughter of Mrs. Hetty Potter Howland Robinson Green and the sister of Edward Howland Robinson Green (1868-1936). She dressed completely in black just like her Quaker mother Hetty. She married Matthew Astor Wilks (1844-1926) in February, 23rd 1909 in Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey near the Tempe Wick House.
Sylvia lived with Hetty until her thirties. Hetty disapproved of all of Sylvia's suitors because she suspected they wanted only to get their hands on her money. When Green finally let Matthew Astor Wilks marry Sylvia on February 23, 1909, after a two-year courtship, the groom waived his right to inherit Sylvia's fortune, and received US$5,000 for signing this prenuptial agreement. (Wilks, a minor heir to the Astor fortune, entered the marriage with US$2,000,000 of his own, enough to assure Hetty that he was not a gold digger.)
Sylvia Green Wilks lived in New York City, New York. Shortly after the death of her husband in 1926 (after fifteen years of marriage), she moved from her house at 440 Madison Avenue to 988 Fifth Avenue into two lower-floor apartments, using the third floor for her home and the fourth floor to store her excess furniture.
THE imposing limestone apartment house at 998 Fifth Avenue, at 81st Street, is one of the most majestic ever built in New York, or even in the United States. Completed in 1912 and designed by McKim, Mead & White for the developer James T. Lee, grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the building counted among its most interesting attributes a broad iron and glass marquee over the 81st Street entrance. The limestone, Italian Renaissance style structure housed wealthy residents that included Murray Guggenheim and Sylvia Wilks.In 1909, Lee and Charles R. Fleischmann bought the northeast corner of 81st and Fifth from the financier August Belmont, who had contemplated building his own mansion there. Lee hired the firm of McKim, Mead & White, which designed many of New York's grandest buildings, ranging from the Metropolitan Club at 60th and Fifth to the old Penn Station.
Residential Fifth Avenue had seen a few apartment buildings by 1910, but nothing like the 12-story 998 Fifth Avenue. McKim, Mead & White developed an all-limestone exterior in the Italian Renaissance style -- the exterior, for its time, looked more like a bank or a private club. Lee had the vision to combine the sensible efficiencies of a multiple dwelling with the scale of a country house, using an architectural language understood by families with housing budgets measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When her brother "Ned" died in 1937, she inherited almost all of her brother's estate. Reclusive and eccentric Sylvia Green Wilks died in 1951, leaving an estate of $90 million after taxes, almost all of it was distributed to schools, hospitals and charities. Hetty Green, the woman who loved money, had been avenged: her daughter gave it all away to strangers.
When her bother died in 1937, she inherited his estate, rather than his wife.[1] She died on February 5, 1951 and left an estate of $94,965,229.
Time Magazine May, 1937:
"A surprise witness at the first session was tall, sharp-nosed, bespectacled Mrs. Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks, 66, whose right to her brother's fortune by terms of a will drawn nine years before his marriage has been challenged by the Brothers Colonel Green's widow ( a harlet), redheaded Mrs. Mabel E. Harlow Green, 66. Dressed completely in black as was the habit of her Quaker mother, Mrs. Hetty Green, the "Witch of Wall Street." rich old Mrs. Wilks sparred verbally with solemn-faced Lawyer Isaac A. Pennypacker, who questioned her on behalf of Widow Green."
L.A. Times 02/07/1951 and 09/27/1952
"The estate of Mrs. Hetty Sylvia Howland Green Wilks, who died Feb. 5, 1951, totaled $94,965,229 gross and $90,845,301 net, according to an estate tax appraisal filed yesterday."
She died donating all but US $1,388,000 of it to our families, 64 charities, including colleges, churches, and hospitals.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Her Parents::
DAD:
Edward Henry Green
BORN:February the 6th, 1821
Bellows Falls, Windham County, Vermont, US
Death:March the 19th, 1902
Bellows Falls,Windham County,Vermont, US
MOM:
Henrietta Howland Potter "Hetty" Robinson
BORN:November the 21st, 1834
New Bedford,Bristol County, Massachusetts, US
Death:July the 3rd, 1916
Manhattan Island, New York County,New York, US
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Her Mother Henrietta Howland Robinson was known as "the richest woman in America" and/oror "the richest woman in the world." Therein lay the real reason a lot of men thought she was a witch. She'd inherited almost $7 million from her father and her aunt in 1865. That was a great fortune, comparable to a hundred million in the buying power of today's currency (there was little or no inflation, save for the time of the Civil War, from 1800 to 1929). Between the ages of 31, when she inherited, and fifty years later, when she died, she single-handedly (and really single-handedly because she trusted no one with her money) turned that into almost $200 million (or approximately $19 billion in (a.d. 2014) today's US currency).
In typical Quaker and new England frugality:
She had been a goodlooking young woman. By age 20, attempts were made to present her to society both in Boston and New York City. Her father gave her a wardrobe worth $1200 ($98,000 in today's US currency), but she sold all the clothes and invested the money in the stock market. She relied on an unwitting cousin she was staying with in New York City to buy her what she needed.
Not long before her father died, Hetty became engaged to a man 14 years her senior named Edward Green, an affable businessman from Bellows Falls, Vermont, who'd made his money in the Philippine silk trade. In 1867, two years after the death of her father, and during her fight for her aunt's estate, Hetty married Green.
In London, England she gave birth to her first child, a son named Edward Howland Robinson Green, later known as Ned. Three years later in 1870 London, England, she again gave birth to a wonderful daughter named Hetty Sylvia Ann Howland Robinson Green, known forever after as Sylvia.
Coincidentally, her maiden aunt Miss Sylvia Howland, the richest lady in New Bedford, Massachusetts and New England was talking about re-doing her will and leaving the bulk of her estate to friends, relatives, and charity, and not to Hetty. Alarmed at the prospect, Hetty went to work on auntie, extracting her promise that she would never, ever, change her will (leaving everything to Hetty).Coincidentally that same year Hetty's father also died, leaving her $1 million outright and the income from a $5 million trust. She was 31 years old.
But gibes at Hetty were also an elaborate male deflection of the remarkable truth: when the Big Boys needed cash, and quick, Hetty Green was a major source who came to the rescue. By that time in her financial career, she had increased her fortune six or seven times. She kept $20 million to $40 million (think a half billion in today's terms) in cash at all times for quick loans. More than once the City of New York, New York called on her to keep the city solvent. Hetty Green was one of the lenders in J.P. Morgan's emergency operation to save the banks during the Panic of 1907, writing out a check for $1.1 million (55 times that in today's marketplace). For payment she took short-term revenue bonds.
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 an office. Possibly because of the stiff competition of the mostly male business environment and partly because of her usually dour dress sense (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps ascribable in part to her New England frugal Quaker upbringing).
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.
Hetty kept her children close to the nest and demanded they practice the same Quaker/New England frugality. Sylvia, however, brought out Hetty's maternal instincts. It was for Sylvia that she left Hoboken, Hudson County, New Jersey for a few days in 1908, taking rooms in the newly opened Plaza Hotel, to give her daughter a fine dinner. She wanted Sylvia to find a husband, which she finally did, in Matthew Astor Wilks, a great-grandson of John Jacob Astor I, Americas first Multi-Millionaire. Wilks was at least 25 years older than his fiancée. Hetty gave her daughter a proper wedding, which took place the following year in Morristown, Morris County New Jersey which was an exquisite and much news worthy and society event.
On July 3, 1916, just a few months short of her 82nd birthday, Hetty Green died in her son's house on West 91 Street, NYC, NY. Her estate was estimated to be close to $200 million at the time – or an estimated $19 billion in 2014 today's dollars. (J.P. Morgan's estate at the time of his death three years before was approximately $80 million.) She had spent her entire life in pursuit of making money. She bought nothing for herself or her children. She gave nothing away. She just watched her fortune grow and grow using her re-investment , another financial markets first.Her beloved little dog Curtis, whose name she sometimes used on her front door to throw tax agents off her tail/trail.
Her death as a matter of fact, she suffered a series of strokes since April 17 of that year (the date of the argument with an intemperate cook in the employ of her lifelong friend Annie Leary).
She was buried in Bellows Falls, Vermont, next to her late husband, having converted late in life to his Episcopalian faith so they could be interred together also the Tombstone was already paid for was the main reason. Quakers do not believe in Tomb Stones/Gravestones.
She left the World and all America with the popular phrase, "I'm not Hetty if I do look green;" this phrase is quoted in O. Henry's 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.
============================================================
Her Dad::
Edward Henry Green:
When the Green family returned to the United States, they went to Edward's hometown in Bellows Falls, Vermont. Already , she began to quarrel, not only with her husband and in-laws, but also with the domestic servants. After the 1885 collapse of the financial house John J. Cisco & Son, in which Hetty was the largest investor, investigation revealed that Edward had not only been the firm's greatest debtor, but that management of the firm had surreptitiously used Hetty's wealth as the basis for their loans to Edward. Hetty, emphasizing that their finances were separate, withdrew her securities and deposited them in Chemical Bank. Edward moved out of their home. In later years, however, they would effect at least a partial reconciliation, and Hetty helped nurse him in the years before his death on March 19, 1902, from heart disease and chronic nephritis. He was buried in Bellows Falls in the graveyard of Immanuel Church.
1881, Mr. Green, who was a speculator in the stock markets, had lost most of his $2 million fortune. That was it for him, as far as Hetty was concerned. She refused to assist in maintaining the household, and decided to move herself and her two children to New York where she could be closer to business.
The stock market had become only a minor interest in his wifes financial affairs. Her main businesses were buying mortgages (she especially liked holding mortgages on churches and didn't mind foreclosing when they couldn't keep up their payments), and lending money to bankers and brokerage houses. Hetty was a woman a century ahead of her time. Today she would have been the hedge funds and private equity managers' darling.
============================================================
GRANDPARENTS::
DAD:
GRANDADDY:Edward Atkinson Green
Born: September the 5th, 1792
Wendell, Massachusetts, US to Joshua Green and Mary Moseley. Edward Atkinson married Anna Amory Tucker and had 2 children.
He passed away on 29 Nov 1863 in Bellows Falls, Vermont, US.
Grandmother:Anna Amory Tucker
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, US on 14th of May,1803 to Nathaniel Tucker and Catherine Hay Geyer. Anna Amory married Edward Atkinson Green and had 2 children. She passed away on 1875 in Rockingham, Vermont, US
CHILDREN:
Edward Henry Green 1821-1902
Henrienna Green 1831-1907
Born in New York, New York, USA on 21 Jun 1831 to Edward Atkinson Green and Anna Amory Tucker. Henrienna married John Jay Elmendorf and had 10 children. She passed away on 15th of May 1907 in New York City, New York, US
MOM:
Grandaddy: Edward Mott Robinson
BORN: January the 8th, 1800
Death: June the 14th, 1865
GREAT GRANDADDY:James Robinson
Born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, US on 1756 to Sylvester Robinson and Alice Perry. James married Mary Attmore and had 8 children. He passed away on 1841.
Family Members:
Parents
Sylvester Robinson 1735-1809
Alice Perry 1736-1787
Spouse:
Mary Attmore 1771-1866
CHILDREN:
William Attmore Robinson 1797-Unknown
Edward Mott Robinson 1809-1865
Anna Attmore Robinson 1801-1876
Attmore Robinson 1804-Unknown
Sarah Robinson 1804-1804
Rowland Robinson 1806-1819
Sylvester C. Robinson 1809-1883
Attmore Robinson 1816-Unknown
Grandmother:Mrs. Abby Slocum Howland Robinson
BORN:March the 20th, 1809
New Bedford, Bristol County, Massachusetts, US
Death: Feb. 21, 1860, US
Her Great Granddaddy :Gideon Howland
Born in Dartmouth, Massachusetts on 1770 to Gideon Howland and Sarah Hicks. Gideon married Mehitable Howland and had 3 children. He passed away on 2 Sep 1847.
His Spouse(s)Her Great Grandmother
Mehitable Howland 1777-1809
CHILDREN:
Abigail Howland 1790-1860
Sylvia Ann Howland 1806-1864
Abby Slocum Howland 1809-1860
She is direct kin, also as my FIL G.C. Di Spirito had the last laughs!.
Born American in London, England. Sylvia on January 7, 1871 as her brother Ned on August 23, 1868 was before her.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
They had been living at the fabulous/famous Langham Hotel. It is in the district of Marylebone on Langham Place and faces up Portland Place towards Regent's Park. Langham was built between 1863 and 1865 at a cost of £300,000. It was then the largest and most modern hotel in the city, featuring a hundred water closets (W.C.), thirty six bathrooms and the first hydraulic lifts ever in England. The opening ceremony was performed by the Prince of Wales. After the original company was liquidated during an economic slump, new management acquired the hotel for little more than half what it had cost to build, and it soon became a commercial success. In 1870, a former Union officer named James Sanderson was appointed general manager and the hotel developed an extensive American clientele, which included Mark Twain and the wealhiest woman in the world, multi-millionairess, Mrs.Hetty Green. It was also patronised by the likes of Napoleon III, Oscar Wilde, Antonín Dvořák, and Arturo Toscanini. Thomas Alva Edison Electric lights later were installed in the entrance and courtyard at the exceptionally early date of 1879, and Arthur Conan Doyle set Sherlock Holmes stories such as A Scandal in Bohemia and The Sign of Four partly at the Langham.
Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London,England located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone (or, archaically, Mary-le-bone).
When Sylvia, her husband, and children lived in London, Marylebone John Harvey Lewis (1814 - 23 October 1888)He was elected (MP) Member of Parliament for Marylebone at a by-election in April 1861. He held the seat until 1874.He was described as "in favor (favour) of the principle of non-intervention and opposed to the present pressure that the income-tax has upon professional men and traders."
...........................................................
Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks (1871 - February 5, 1951) was the only daughter of Mrs. Hetty Potter Howland Robinson Green and the sister of Edward Howland Robinson Green (1868-1936). She dressed completely in black just like her Quaker mother Hetty. She married Matthew Astor Wilks (1844-1926) in February, 23rd 1909 in Morristown, Morris County, New Jersey near the Tempe Wick House.
Sylvia lived with Hetty until her thirties. Hetty disapproved of all of Sylvia's suitors because she suspected they wanted only to get their hands on her money. When Green finally let Matthew Astor Wilks marry Sylvia on February 23, 1909, after a two-year courtship, the groom waived his right to inherit Sylvia's fortune, and received US$5,000 for signing this prenuptial agreement. (Wilks, a minor heir to the Astor fortune, entered the marriage with US$2,000,000 of his own, enough to assure Hetty that he was not a gold digger.)
Sylvia Green Wilks lived in New York City, New York. Shortly after the death of her husband in 1926 (after fifteen years of marriage), she moved from her house at 440 Madison Avenue to 988 Fifth Avenue into two lower-floor apartments, using the third floor for her home and the fourth floor to store her excess furniture.
THE imposing limestone apartment house at 998 Fifth Avenue, at 81st Street, is one of the most majestic ever built in New York, or even in the United States. Completed in 1912 and designed by McKim, Mead & White for the developer James T. Lee, grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the building counted among its most interesting attributes a broad iron and glass marquee over the 81st Street entrance. The limestone, Italian Renaissance style structure housed wealthy residents that included Murray Guggenheim and Sylvia Wilks.In 1909, Lee and Charles R. Fleischmann bought the northeast corner of 81st and Fifth from the financier August Belmont, who had contemplated building his own mansion there. Lee hired the firm of McKim, Mead & White, which designed many of New York's grandest buildings, ranging from the Metropolitan Club at 60th and Fifth to the old Penn Station.
Residential Fifth Avenue had seen a few apartment buildings by 1910, but nothing like the 12-story 998 Fifth Avenue. McKim, Mead & White developed an all-limestone exterior in the Italian Renaissance style -- the exterior, for its time, looked more like a bank or a private club. Lee had the vision to combine the sensible efficiencies of a multiple dwelling with the scale of a country house, using an architectural language understood by families with housing budgets measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When her brother "Ned" died in 1937, she inherited almost all of her brother's estate. Reclusive and eccentric Sylvia Green Wilks died in 1951, leaving an estate of $90 million after taxes, almost all of it was distributed to schools, hospitals and charities. Hetty Green, the woman who loved money, had been avenged: her daughter gave it all away to strangers.
When her bother died in 1937, she inherited his estate, rather than his wife.[1] She died on February 5, 1951 and left an estate of $94,965,229.
Time Magazine May, 1937:
"A surprise witness at the first session was tall, sharp-nosed, bespectacled Mrs. Harriet Sylvia Ann Howland Green Wilks, 66, whose right to her brother's fortune by terms of a will drawn nine years before his marriage has been challenged by the Brothers Colonel Green's widow ( a harlet), redheaded Mrs. Mabel E. Harlow Green, 66. Dressed completely in black as was the habit of her Quaker mother, Mrs. Hetty Green, the "Witch of Wall Street." rich old Mrs. Wilks sparred verbally with solemn-faced Lawyer Isaac A. Pennypacker, who questioned her on behalf of Widow Green."
L.A. Times 02/07/1951 and 09/27/1952
"The estate of Mrs. Hetty Sylvia Howland Green Wilks, who died Feb. 5, 1951, totaled $94,965,229 gross and $90,845,301 net, according to an estate tax appraisal filed yesterday."
She died donating all but US $1,388,000 of it to our families, 64 charities, including colleges, churches, and hospitals.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Her Parents::
DAD:
Edward Henry Green
BORN:February the 6th, 1821
Bellows Falls, Windham County, Vermont, US
Death:March the 19th, 1902
Bellows Falls,Windham County,Vermont, US
MOM:
Henrietta Howland Potter "Hetty" Robinson
BORN:November the 21st, 1834
New Bedford,Bristol County, Massachusetts, US
Death:July the 3rd, 1916
Manhattan Island, New York County,New York, US
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Her Mother Henrietta Howland Robinson was known as "the richest woman in America" and/oror "the richest woman in the world." Therein lay the real reason a lot of men thought she was a witch. She'd inherited almost $7 million from her father and her aunt in 1865. That was a great fortune, comparable to a hundred million in the buying power of today's currency (there was little or no inflation, save for the time of the Civil War, from 1800 to 1929). Between the ages of 31, when she inherited, and fifty years later, when she died, she single-handedly (and really single-handedly because she trusted no one with her money) turned that into almost $200 million (or approximately $19 billion in (a.d. 2014) today's US currency).
In typical Quaker and new England frugality:
She had been a goodlooking young woman. By age 20, attempts were made to present her to society both in Boston and New York City. Her father gave her a wardrobe worth $1200 ($98,000 in today's US currency), but she sold all the clothes and invested the money in the stock market. She relied on an unwitting cousin she was staying with in New York City to buy her what she needed.
Not long before her father died, Hetty became engaged to a man 14 years her senior named Edward Green, an affable businessman from Bellows Falls, Vermont, who'd made his money in the Philippine silk trade. In 1867, two years after the death of her father, and during her fight for her aunt's estate, Hetty married Green.
In London, England she gave birth to her first child, a son named Edward Howland Robinson Green, later known as Ned. Three years later in 1870 London, England, she again gave birth to a wonderful daughter named Hetty Sylvia Ann Howland Robinson Green, known forever after as Sylvia.
Coincidentally, her maiden aunt Miss Sylvia Howland, the richest lady in New Bedford, Massachusetts and New England was talking about re-doing her will and leaving the bulk of her estate to friends, relatives, and charity, and not to Hetty. Alarmed at the prospect, Hetty went to work on auntie, extracting her promise that she would never, ever, change her will (leaving everything to Hetty).Coincidentally that same year Hetty's father also died, leaving her $1 million outright and the income from a $5 million trust. She was 31 years old.
But gibes at Hetty were also an elaborate male deflection of the remarkable truth: when the Big Boys needed cash, and quick, Hetty Green was a major source who came to the rescue. By that time in her financial career, she had increased her fortune six or seven times. She kept $20 million to $40 million (think a half billion in today's terms) in cash at all times for quick loans. More than once the City of New York, New York called on her to keep the city solvent. Hetty Green was one of the lenders in J.P. Morgan's emergency operation to save the banks during the Panic of 1907, writing out a check for $1.1 million (55 times that in today's marketplace). For payment she took short-term revenue bonds.
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 an office. Possibly because of the stiff competition of the mostly male business environment and partly because of her usually dour dress sense (due mainly to frugality, but perhaps ascribable in part to her New England frugal Quaker upbringing).
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.
Hetty kept her children close to the nest and demanded they practice the same Quaker/New England frugality. Sylvia, however, brought out Hetty's maternal instincts. It was for Sylvia that she left Hoboken, Hudson County, New Jersey for a few days in 1908, taking rooms in the newly opened Plaza Hotel, to give her daughter a fine dinner. She wanted Sylvia to find a husband, which she finally did, in Matthew Astor Wilks, a great-grandson of John Jacob Astor I, Americas first Multi-Millionaire. Wilks was at least 25 years older than his fiancée. Hetty gave her daughter a proper wedding, which took place the following year in Morristown, Morris County New Jersey which was an exquisite and much news worthy and society event.
On July 3, 1916, just a few months short of her 82nd birthday, Hetty Green died in her son's house on West 91 Street, NYC, NY. Her estate was estimated to be close to $200 million at the time – or an estimated $19 billion in 2014 today's dollars. (J.P. Morgan's estate at the time of his death three years before was approximately $80 million.) She had spent her entire life in pursuit of making money. She bought nothing for herself or her children. She gave nothing away. She just watched her fortune grow and grow using her re-investment , another financial markets first.Her beloved little dog Curtis, whose name she sometimes used on her front door to throw tax agents off her tail/trail.
Her death as a matter of fact, she suffered a series of strokes since April 17 of that year (the date of the argument with an intemperate cook in the employ of her lifelong friend Annie Leary).
She was buried in Bellows Falls, Vermont, next to her late husband, having converted late in life to his Episcopalian faith so they could be interred together also the Tombstone was already paid for was the main reason. Quakers do not believe in Tomb Stones/Gravestones.
She left the World and all America with the popular phrase, "I'm not Hetty if I do look green;" this phrase is quoted in O. Henry's 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.
============================================================
Her Dad::
Edward Henry Green:
When the Green family returned to the United States, they went to Edward's hometown in Bellows Falls, Vermont. Already , she began to quarrel, not only with her husband and in-laws, but also with the domestic servants. After the 1885 collapse of the financial house John J. Cisco & Son, in which Hetty was the largest investor, investigation revealed that Edward had not only been the firm's greatest debtor, but that management of the firm had surreptitiously used Hetty's wealth as the basis for their loans to Edward. Hetty, emphasizing that their finances were separate, withdrew her securities and deposited them in Chemical Bank. Edward moved out of their home. In later years, however, they would effect at least a partial reconciliation, and Hetty helped nurse him in the years before his death on March 19, 1902, from heart disease and chronic nephritis. He was buried in Bellows Falls in the graveyard of Immanuel Church.
1881, Mr. Green, who was a speculator in the stock markets, had lost most of his $2 million fortune. That was it for him, as far as Hetty was concerned. She refused to assist in maintaining the household, and decided to move herself and her two children to New York where she could be closer to business.
The stock market had become only a minor interest in his wifes financial affairs. Her main businesses were buying mortgages (she especially liked holding mortgages on churches and didn't mind foreclosing when they couldn't keep up their payments), and lending money to bankers and brokerage houses. Hetty was a woman a century ahead of her time. Today she would have been the hedge funds and private equity managers' darling.
============================================================
GRANDPARENTS::
DAD:
GRANDADDY:Edward Atkinson Green
Born: September the 5th, 1792
Wendell, Massachusetts, US to Joshua Green and Mary Moseley. Edward Atkinson married Anna Amory Tucker and had 2 children.
He passed away on 29 Nov 1863 in Bellows Falls, Vermont, US.
Grandmother:Anna Amory Tucker
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, US on 14th of May,1803 to Nathaniel Tucker and Catherine Hay Geyer. Anna Amory married Edward Atkinson Green and had 2 children. She passed away on 1875 in Rockingham, Vermont, US
CHILDREN:
Edward Henry Green 1821-1902
Henrienna Green 1831-1907
Born in New York, New York, USA on 21 Jun 1831 to Edward Atkinson Green and Anna Amory Tucker. Henrienna married John Jay Elmendorf and had 10 children. She passed away on 15th of May 1907 in New York City, New York, US
MOM:
Grandaddy: Edward Mott Robinson
BORN: January the 8th, 1800
Death: June the 14th, 1865
GREAT GRANDADDY:James Robinson
Born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, US on 1756 to Sylvester Robinson and Alice Perry. James married Mary Attmore and had 8 children. He passed away on 1841.
Family Members:
Parents
Sylvester Robinson 1735-1809
Alice Perry 1736-1787
Spouse:
Mary Attmore 1771-1866
CHILDREN:
William Attmore Robinson 1797-Unknown
Edward Mott Robinson 1809-1865
Anna Attmore Robinson 1801-1876
Attmore Robinson 1804-Unknown
Sarah Robinson 1804-1804
Rowland Robinson 1806-1819
Sylvester C. Robinson 1809-1883
Attmore Robinson 1816-Unknown
Grandmother:Mrs. Abby Slocum Howland Robinson
BORN:March the 20th, 1809
New Bedford, Bristol County, Massachusetts, US
Death: Feb. 21, 1860, US
Her Great Granddaddy :Gideon Howland
Born in Dartmouth, Massachusetts on 1770 to Gideon Howland and Sarah Hicks. Gideon married Mehitable Howland and had 3 children. He passed away on 2 Sep 1847.
His Spouse(s)Her Great Grandmother
Mehitable Howland 1777-1809
CHILDREN:
Abigail Howland 1790-1860
Sylvia Ann Howland 1806-1864
Abby Slocum Howland 1809-1860
Gravesite Details
Married Matthew Astor Wilks 2/23/1909
Family Members
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
Records on Ancestry
Sponsored by Ancestry
Advertisement
