Who was named "America’s Richest Idiot"?

Timothy Dexter (January 22, 1747 – October 23, 1806) was an American businessman noted for his writing and eccentricity.

Dexter was born in Malden in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. He had little schooling and dropped out of school to work as a farm laborer at the age of eight years. He married 32-year-old Elizabeth Frothingham, a rich widow, and bought a mansion. He had 2 children Nancy and Samuel.

At the end of the American Revolutionary War, he purchased large amounts of depreciated Continental currency that was worthless at the time. As luck would have it, though, when the war ended, the continental suddenly shot up in value. Timothy’s stupidity made him a very rich man.He bought a trading ship, so he could make even more money by shipping goods whithersoever. People jokingly told him to "ship coal to Newcastle". Fortuitously, he did so during a Newcastle miners' strike, and his cargo was sold at a premium.

Timothy Dexter was a stupid man, and he never learned to write. But he wrote a book anyway. It was called "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones". It had no punctuation. Most words were misspelled. Capitalization was random. People hoped his book might be a fountain of wisdom, the truth behind how he became so successful.

The book sold like hotcakes. Every copy was bought up.

Timothy Dexter died a happy man. His tombstone reads, “I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western World.”

Perhaps he was.