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How Timothy Dexter Turned Ridiculous Ventures Into Riches

Khalid Elhassan November 22, 2024 13 min

Dexter - Timothy Dexter — Timothy Dexter. New England Legends

10. The Town’s Seediest Mansion

Dexter - Timothy Dexter's house in the early nineteenth century — Timothy Dexter’s house in the early nineteenth century. All That is Interesting

Dexter’s new neighbors in Newburyport disliked him as much as his old ones in Charlestown had. The tacky McMansion with its garish columns topped by wooden statues was bad enough. Worse, Dexter turned his residence into a seedy pleasure dome that locals likened to a brothel. Prostitutes came and went at all hours, long nights of loud and drunken parties became a norm, and the fine interiors, including curtains once owned by a French queen, were soon covered in “unseemly stains, offensive to sight and smell“. His wife bailed out, and moved elsewhere. When Dexter bought ships and announced his intent to get into international trade, fed up neighbors offered him terribly dumb advice, in the hope that he’d bankrupt himself and be forced to move.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.