In 1881, Olive Burnham left her hometown of Milan to visit her mother in Chicago, Ill.
Olive was not planning to make waves in the international financial market. She didn’t intend to pull off a giant stock scandal. She just wanted to visit her mother, Emily Burnham. Emily was living in Chicago with a Civil War veteran and preacher, William E. Howard.
Emily might not have known Howard hadn’t been kind to his previous family. He had walked away from a wife and child in Rhode Island.
But Howard was much more interesting to hang around with, compared to the farmers around Milan. Howard was spending time with an inventor named Henry Friend, who was working in a Chicago carriage shop.
“Professor” Friend, as he called himself, had recently promised some Chicago business investors he could turn grapes into sugar with a secret process. Friend had enjoyed a grand lifestyle in Chicago for over a year, spending money from grape and sugar investors. But this lifestyle ended abruptly when the investors grew suspicious after seeing no results from their investments and they called the police on him.
Friend did not face any jail time for the scam. No one had pulled off a racket quite like this before in Chicago, so there was no law against it.
After the grapes-to-sugar con, Friend was working in the carriage shop, looking for another gig.
Howard realized Friend was a two-bit swindler. But under Howard’s careful eye, Friend could improve his skills and become a really great…
