35 Facts About Jay Gould

Jason Gould was an American railroad magnate and financial speculator who founded the Gould business dynasty.

Jay Gould is generally identified as one of the robber barons of the Gilded Age.

Jay Gould was an unpopular figure during his life and remains controversial.

Jay Gould was born in Roxbury, New York, to Mary More and John Burr Jay Gould.

Jay Gould's maternal grandfather, Alexander T More, was a businessman, and his great-grandfather, John More, was a Scottish immigrant who founded the town of Moresville, New York.

Jay Gould grew up in poverty and had to work at his family's small dairy farm.

Jay Gould studied at the Hobart Academy in Hobart, New York, paying his way by bookkeeping.

Jay Gould devoted himself to private study, emphasizing surveying and mathematics.

In 1856, Jay Gould entered a partnership with Charles Mortimer Leupp, a son-in-law of Gideon Lee and one of the leading leather merchants in the United States.

Leupp lost all his money in that financial crisis, but Jay Gould took advantage of the depreciation in property value and bought up former partnership properties.

Jay Gould had a railroad line installed next to the lake and he supplied New York City with ice during the summer months.

Jay Gould believed that Gould had cheated the Leupp and Lee families during the collapse of the business.

Jay Gould eventually took physical possession, but he was later forced to sell his shares in the company to Lee's brother.

In 1859, Jay Gould began speculative investing by buying stock in small railways.

Jay Gould purchased stock for 10 cents on the dollar, which left him in control of the company.

Jay Gould engaged in more speculation on railroad stocks in New York City throughout the Civil War, and he was appointed manager of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad in 1863.

Jay Gould, Drew, and James Fisk engaged in stock manipulations, known as the Erie War, and Drew, Fisk, and Vanderbilt lost control of the Erie in the summer of 1868, while Jay Gould became its president.

In 1869, Tweed and Jay Gould became the subjects of critical political cartoons by Thomas Nast.

Jay Gould was the chief bondsman in October 1871 when Tweed was held on $1 million bail.

Jay Gould made a small profit from that operation by hedging against his own attempted corner as it was about to collapse, but lost it in subsequent lawsuits.

In 1873, Jay Gould attempted to take control of the Erie Railroad by recruiting foreign investments from Lord Gordon-Gordon, supposedly a cousin of the wealthy Campbell clan, who was buying land for immigrants.

Jay Gould bribed Gordon-Gordon with a million dollars in stock, but Gordon-Gordon was an impostor and cashed the stock immediately.

Jay Gould sued him and the case went to trial in March 1873.

Jay Gould immediately fled to Canada, where he convinced authorities that the charges were false.

Jay Gould took control of the Union Pacific in 1873, after its stock had been depressed by the Panic of 1873, and he built a viable railroad that depended on shipments from farmers and ranchers.

Jay Gould immersed himself in every operational and financial detail of the Union Pacific system, building an encyclopedic knowledge of the network and acting decisively to shape its destiny.

Jay Gould controlled 10,000 miles of railway, about one-ninth of the rail network in the United States at that time.

Jay Gould obtained a controlling interest in the Western Union telegraph company and, after 1881, in the elevated railways in New York City, and he had a controlling interest in 15 percent of the country's railway tracks by 1882.

Jay Gould withdrew from management of the Union Pacific in 1883, amid political controversy over its debts to the federal government, but he realized a large profit for himself.

Jay Gould was extensively criticized during his lifetime, on the basis that he was a trader rather than a builder of businesses, and of being unscrupulous, although more recent appraisal has suggested that his business ethics were not unusual for the time.

Jay Gould was a member of West Presbyterian Church at 31 West 42nd Street.

Jay Gould married Helen Day Miller in 1863 and they had six children.

Together with his son George, Jay Gould was a founding member of American Yacht Club.

On December 2,1892, Jay Gould died of tuberculosis, then referred to as consumption, and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York.

At the time of his death, Gould was a benefactor in the reconstruction of the Reformed Church of Roxbury, New York, now known as the Jay Gould Memorial Reformed Church.