Jay Gould

Jason Gould (May 27, 1836 – December 2, 1892) was an American financier, who became a leading American railroad developer and speculator.

Birth and early career
Jason Gould, the son of John Burr Gould (1792-1866) and Mary More Gould (1798-1841), was born on a dairy farm in Roxbury, New York. Contrary to the assumptions of Henry Ford and Henry Adams, who presumed Gould to be a Jew, Gould's father was of British colonial ancestry, and his mother of Scottish ancestry. He studied at the Hobart Academy, but left at age 16 to work for his father in the hardware business. He continued to devote himself to private study, emphasizing surveying and mathematics. Gould later went to work in the lumber and tanning business in western New York and then became involved with banking in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1856, he published the History of Delaware County, New York.

Marriage
He married Helen Day Miller (1838-1889) in 1863 and had six children:
 * George Jay Gould I (1864–1923), married Edith M. Kingdon (1864–1921)
 * Edwin Gould I (1866–1933), married Sarah Cantine Shrady
 * Helen Gould (1868–1938), married Finlay Johnson Shepard (1867–1942)
 * Howard Gould (1871–1959), married Viola Katherine Clemmons on October 12, 1898; and later married actress Grete Mosheim in 1937
 * Anna Gould (1875–1961), married Paul Ernest Boniface, Comte de Castellane (1867-1932); and after a divorce married his cousin: Helie de Talleyrand-Perigord, 5th duc de Talleyrand, 5th duc de Dino, 4th Herzog von Sagan, and Prince de Sagan (1858–1937)
 * Frank Jay Gould (1877–1956), married Helen Kelley; then Edith Kelly; and then Florence La Caze (1895–1983)

The Tweed Ring
It was during the same period that Gould and James Fisk became involved with Tammany Hall. They made Boss Tweed a director of the Erie Railroad, and Tweed, in return, arranged favorable legislation for them. Tweed and Gould became the subjects of political cartoons by Thomas Nast in 1869. In October 1871, when Tweed was held on $8 million bail, Gould was the chief bondsman.

Black Friday


In August 1869, Gould and Fisk began to buy gold in an attempt to corner the market, hoping that the increase in the price of gold would increase the price of wheat such that western farmers would sell, causing a great amount of shipping of bread stuffs eastward, increasing freight business for the Erie railroad. During this time, Gould used contacts with President Ulysses S. Grant's brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, to try to influence the president and his Secretary General Horace Porter. These speculations in gold culminated in the panic of Black Friday, on September 24, 1869, when the premium over face value on a gold Double Eagle fell from 62% to 35%. Gould made a nominal profit from this operation, but lost it in the subsequent lawsuits. The affair also cost him his reputation.

Late career
After being forced out of the Erie Railroad, Gould started, in 1879, to build up a system of railroads in the Midwest by gaining control of four western railroads, including the Union Pacific and the Missouri Pacific Railroad. In 1880, he was in control of 10,000 miles (16,000 km) of railway, about one-ninth of the length of rail in the United States at that time, and, by 1882, he had controlling interest in 15% of the country's tracks. Gould withdrew from management of the UP in 1883 amidst political controversy over its debts to the federal government, realizing a large profit for himself.

Gould also obtained a controlling interest in the Western Union telegraph company, and, after 1881, in the elevated railways in New York City. Ultimately, he was connected with many of the largest railway financial operations in the United States from 1868-1888. During the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886 he hired strikebreakers; according to labor unionists, he said at the time, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."

Legacy
Gould died of tuberculosis on December 2, 1892 and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York. His fortune was conservatively estimated $72 million for tax purposes. He left all of it to his family. The family mausoleum was designed by Francis O'Hara (1830-1900) of Ireland.

In his lifetime and for a century after, Gould had a firm reputation as the most unethical of the 19th century American businessmen known as robber barons. Many times he allowed his rivals to believe that he was beaten, then sprang some legal or contractual loophole on them that completely reversed the situation and gave him the advantage. He pioneered the practice, now commonplace, of declaring bankruptcy as a strategic maneuver. He had no opposition to using stock manipulation and insider trading (which were then legal but frowned upon) to build capital and to execute or prevent hostile takeover attempts. As a result, many contemporary businessmen did not trust Gould and often expressed contempt for his approach to business. Even so, John D. Rockefeller named him as the most skilled businessman he ever encountered.

The New York City press published many rumors about Gould that biographers passed on as fact. For example, they alleged that Gould's dealings in the tanning business drove his partner Charles Leupp to suicide. In fact, Leupp had episodes of mania and depression that psychiatrists would now recognize as indications of bipolar disorder, and his family knew that this, not his business dealings, caused his death. These biographers portrayed Gould as a parasite who extracted money from businesses and took no interest in improving them. Anti-semitism, in connection with Gould's name, motivated some of this hostility, even though he was born a Presbyterian and married an Episcopalian.

More recent biographers, including Maury Klein and Edward Renehan, have reexamined Gould's career with more attention to primary sources. They have concluded that fiction often overwhelmed fact in previous accounts, and that despite his methods, Gould's objectives were usually constructive.

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

Timeline

 * 1836 Birth of Jay Gould as Jason Gould
 * 1841 Death of Mary Moore Gould, mother
 * 1850 US Census with Jay Gould in Roxbury, New York
 * 1856 Publication of History of Delaware County
 * 1863 Marriage to Helen Day Miller (1838-1889)
 * 1864 Birth of George Jay Gould I, his son
 * 1866 Death of John Burr Gould, his father
 * 1866 Birth of Edwin Gould, his son
 * 1868 Birth of Helen Gould, his daughter
 * 1869 Black Friday
 * 1870 US Census in first Manhattan home
 * 1870 US Census in second Manhattan home
 * 1871 Birth of Howard Gould, his son
 * 1875 Birth of Anna Gould, his daughter
 * 1877 Birth of Frank Gould, his son
 * 1880 Purchase of Lyndehurst from the widow of George Merritt, shortening name to Lyndhurst
 * 1880 US Census with Jay Gould in Greenburgh, New York
 * 1889 Death of Helen Day Miller, his wife
 * 1892 Death of Jay Gould