This house was built in 1771. This was once the lavish residence
of “Lord” Timothy Dexter. Lord Timothy, Newburyport’s self- titled eccentric,
cluttered his estate with statues of the great, his own included. He beat his wife for not giving vent to
sufficient grief at a mock funeral held for himself. But his “lordship” was far
from crazy. He gained a good portion of his wealth by buying up depreciated
Continental currency. He made a tidy profit out of a cargo of warming-pans
sent, with every appearance of lunacy, to the West Indies, and there snapped up
for molasses ladles. He published in 1802 a book called Pickles for the Knowing Ones, in which all the punctuation appeared
at the end of the book as pages of commas and periods, bearing the unique
caption “Salt and Pepper to Taste.”
[From American Auto Trails-Massachusetts’ U.S. Highway 1]
Historic Highway Guides 