How the “Witch of Wall Street” Became America’s Most Controversial Millionaire

Was she a monster or a 19th-century Warren Buffet?

Hetty Green sits at a table with her fellow tycoons J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, among others, in this 1905 cartoon (PD)

You may be familiar with the big moneybags of the late 1800s — the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, and Morgans. But the most fascinating character of the era was not a steel baron or railroad builder. In fact, it wasn’t even a man: she was the “Witch of Wall Street,” Hetty Green. Through hard-nosed, intelligent investing, she amassed a fortune worth over $3 billion in today’s money. She was also the Guinness-certified “greatest miser” in the world. Her eccentricities — and her gender — made her a feared and despised figure in nineteenth-century New York.

Green wasn’t entirely self-made. She was born into a wealthy Massachusetts family that operated a whaling and shipping business. By all accounts, she was fascinated by making money from a young age, reading over the financial reports with her grandfather as a girl. Despite the fact that nineteenth-century women often didn’t have the ability to manage their own finances, she was ruthless, fiercely independent, and totally focused on making a buck. When her father bought her a fancy wardrobe to help her find a husband, she sold the dresses and invested the proceeds in the bond market.