Henrietta Howland Robinson Green was an American businesswoman and financier.
Background
Henrietta Howland “Hetty” Robinson Green was born on November 21, 1834, at New Bedford, Massachusets. He was the daughter of Edward Mott Robinson and Abby Slocum Howland, both of Quaker stock.
Her father acquired an independent fortune as a partner in the house of Howland, which amassed great wealth in whaling and the China trade during a long period preceding the Civil War.
Much of the daughter’s childhood and many of her later years were passed with a maiden aunt, Sylvia Ann Howland, who was reputed the richest woman in New Bedford, her wealth having also come from the shipping and trading interests of the Howland family.
In 1860, when she was twenty-five, her mother died, and three years later, when her father left New Bedford because of business interests in New York City, she accompanied him.
Education
By way of formal education, Green attended a Friends’ school on Cape Cod and later Mrs. James Lowell’s School in Boston.
Career
Notwithstanding a rather somber background and rearing, Hetty was no stranger to social gaiety.
Her father died in 1865 and by his will, she received about $1, 000, 000 outright and a life interest in nearly $5, 000, 000 more. About the same time, her aunt, Sylvia Ann Howland, died in New Bedford, leaving her a life interest in a residuary estate of perhaps a million and a half.
Knowing that she was heir-at-law as the only living person in the fourth generation from Gideon Howland, she made claim to the absolute inheritance of her aunt’s property. This claim was not sustained by the courts, and as a plaintiff in legal proceedings against the trustees under the will admitted to probate, she presented an earlier will (1862) in which she was the chief beneficiary. It contained a strange compact between her aunt and herself to the effect that neither could make a later will without consulting the other. Much litigation followed, but before the case was finally decided a settlement was made out of court.
The father and mother entered into an arrangement under which each remained wholly independent of the other in all financial matters.
Returning to the United States, she became a successful operator in the Stock Exchange. Her handling of the great interests in her charge was eagerly watched by men familiar with large affairs.
She negotiated several successful “bull” movements on the New York Stock Exchange, notably in Louisville & Nashville, Philadelphia & Reading, and Georgia Central Railroad stocks.
Her business in Wall Street was chiefly confined, however, to the lending of money. Foreseeing the money stringency of 1907, she converted extensive investments into cash and was prepared to meet the heavy demands of that panic period, with a resulting profit to others as well as to herself.
Meanwhile, she retained and extended her holdings in the railroad, government, and municipal bonds, but did not confine her investments to those classes of securities.
After her husband’s death in 1902, she lived with her daughter in a modest Hoboken apartment and intermittently in New York City, where she died at the age of eighty-one, survived by a son and a daughter, to whom her estate of over $100, 000, 000 descended. After her death, it was found that she had over $5, 000, 000 invested in Chicago real estate.
Achievements
Hetty Green had long been reputed the richest woman in the United States. She inherited $10 million dollars, which she parlayed into a vastly greater sum through shrewd stock investments.
Views
Quotations:
"There is no great secret in fortune making. All you do is buy cheap and sell dear, act with thrift and shrewdness and be persistent. "
"More money is made in the end by an over-supply of caution than by indiscriminate recklessness. "
"I buy when things are low and no one wants them. I keep them until they go up, and people are crazy to get them. "
"A good business woman is often sharper than a good business man. "
"Railroads and real estate are the things I like. Before deciding on an investment, I seek out every kind of information about it. "
"When I see a thing, going cheap because nobody wants it, I buy a lot of it and tuck it away. Then, when the time comes, they have to hunt me up and pay me a good price for my holdings. "
"For forty years I have had to fight every inch of the way. "
"As long as women won’t save we’re not likely to have many women millionaires in this country. "
"I saw the handwriting on the wall and began quietly to call in my money…"
"When the crash came I had money, and I was one of the very few who really had it. "
Personality
“Hetty Green, ” as she was popularly known for nearly forty years, was partly the victim of a newspaper tradition, partly of her own eccentricities.
Her native shrewdness, intensified by single-handed combat with the financial powers of her time, steeled her personality for conflict and perhaps subordinated the more ordinary womanly traits.
The newspapers always over-emphasized those peculiarities in her conduct that seemed to indicate a grasping and penurious disposition.
Like every person known to have great wealth, she was annoyed by importunities from strangers and to avoid them adopted a simple and obscure manner of life.
A keen New England wit, rather than humor, was always with her. Asked why she had taken out a license to carry a revolver, she replied: “Mostly to protect myself against lawyers. I’m not much afraid of burglars or highwaymen. ”
She was an incredibly miserly woman (her nickname was the "Witch of Wall Street"), her eccentricies became legendary in her time.
Connections
Before her father’s death, Hetty had become engaged to Edward Henry Green, fourteen years her senior, who had long been engaged in the Philippine silk trade. The marriage took place in 1867.
While the couple were living abroad, a son and a daughter were born to them.
