Timothy Dexter

Timothy Dexter (1747–1806) was an American merchant and eccentric from Newburyport, Massachusetts. A leather dresser with little schooling, he married a wealthy widow, bought up depreciated Continental currency that the new government later redeemed at a fraction of face value, and made further fortunes in ventures that should have failed, famously shipping coal to Newcastle. He styled himself Lord Timothy Dexter, filled his garden with wooden statues of great men including himself, staged his own mock funeral and in 1802 published A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, a book without punctuation to which he later added a page of punctuation marks for readers to distribute as they pleased.