Gould, Jay, 1836-1892

Jason Gould (/ɡuːld/; May 27, 1836 – December 2, 1892) was an American railroad magnate and financial speculator who founded the Gould business dynasty. He is generally identified as one of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. His sharp and often unscrupulous business practices made him one of the wealthiest men of the late nineteenth century. Gould was an unpopular figure during his life and remains controversial.[2][3][4]

Early life and education
Gould was born in Roxbury, New York, to Mary More (1798–1841) and John Burr Gould (1792–1866). His 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. Gould studied at the Hobart Academy in Hobart, New York,[5] paying his way by bookkeeping.[6] As a young boy, he decided that he wanted nothing to do with farming, his father's occupation, so his father dropped him off at a nearby school with fifty cents and a sack of clothes.[7] In 1856, Gould entered a partnership with Zadock Pratt[8] to create a tanning business in Pennsylvania in an area that was later named Gouldsboro. He eventually bought out Pratt, who retired. In 1856, 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. The partnership was successful, until the Panic of 1857. Leupp lost all his money in that financial crisis, but Gould took advantage of the depreciation in property value and bought up former partnership properties.[8] n 1859, Gould began speculative investing by buying stock in small railways. His father-in-law Daniel S. Miller introduced him to the railroad industry by suggesting that Gould help him save his investment in the Rutland and Washington Railroad in the Panic of 1857. Gould purchased stock for 10 cents on the dollar, which left him in control of the company.[11] He 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.

The Erie Railroad encountered financial troubles in the 1850s, despite receiving loans from financiers Cornelius Vanderbilt and Daniel Drew. It entered receivership in 1859 and was reorganized as the Erie Railway. 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 Gould became its president.[12]

Tammany Hall
It was during the same period that Gould and Fisk became involved with Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine that largely ran New York City at the time. They made its boss, notorious William M. "Boss" Tweed, a director of the Erie Railroad, and Tweed arranged favorable legislation. Tweed and Gould became the subjects of political cartoons by Thomas Nast in 1869. Gould was the chief bondsman in October 1871 when Tweed was held on $1 million bail. Tweed was eventually convicted of corruption and died in jail.[13] In August 1869, Gould and his partner James Fisk conspired to begin to buy gold in an attempt to illegally corner the market. During this time, Gould used contacts with President Ulysses S. Grant's brother-in-law Abel Corbin to influence the president and his Secretary General Horace Porter.[14][15] These speculations culminated in the panic of Black Friday on September 24, 1869, when the greenback (cash) premium over face value fell on a gold double eagle from 62 percent to 35 percent. Gould made a small profit from this operation by hedging against his own attempted corner as it was about to collapse, but he lost it in subsequent lawsuits. The gold corner established Gould's reputation in the press as an all-powerful figure who could drive the market up and down at will.[16] Favored by Tweed Ring judges, the conspiratorial partners escaped prosecution, but the months of economic turmoil that rocked the nation following the failed corner proved both ruinous to farmers and bankrupting of some of Wall Street's most venerable financial institutions. After being forced out of the Erie Railroad, Gould started to build up a system of railroads in the Midwest and west. He took control of the Union Pacific in 1873 when its stock was depressed by the Panic of 1873, and he built a viable railroad that depended on shipments from farmers and ranchers. He immersed himself in every operational and financial detail of the Union Pacific system, building an encyclopedic knowledge and acting decisively to shape its destiny. Biographer Maury Klein states that "he revised its financial structure, waged its competitive struggles, captained its political battles, revamped its administration, formulated its rate policies, and promoted the development of resources along its lines."[19][20]

By 1879, Gould gained control of two important western railroads, including the Missouri Pacific Railroad and the Denver and Rio Grande Railway. He controlled 10,000 miles (16,000 km) of railway, about one-ninth of the rail in the United States at that time. He obtained a controlling interest in the Western Union telegraph company and in the elevated railways in New York City after 1881, and he had controlling interest in 15 percent of the country's railway tracks by 1882. The railroads were making profits and set their own rates, and his wealth increased dramatically. He 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.

In 1889, he organized the Terminal Railroad Association of St. Louis which acquired a bottleneck in east–west railroad traffic at St. Louis, but the government brought an antitrust suit to eliminate the bottleneck control after Gould died.[21] Gould was a member of West Presbyterian Church at 31 West 42nd Street. It later merged with Park Presbyterian to form West-Park Presbyterian.[24]

He married Helen Day Miller (1838–1889) in 1863 and they had six children.

Together with his son George, Gould was a founding member of American Yacht Club.[25][26] He owned the steam yacht Atalanta (1883). He purchased the Gothic Revival mansion Lyndhurst (sometimes spelled "Lindhurst") to use as a country house in 1880.

Gould died of tuberculosis, then referred to as "consumption" on December 2, 1892, and was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, New York. His fortune was conservatively estimated for tax purposes at $72 million (equivalent to $2.44 billion in 2024[27]), which he willed in its entirety to his family.[5]

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.[28] It is located within the Main Street Historic District and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.[29] The family mausoleum was designed by Francis O'Hara.

Jay Gould (1826-1892) was an American financier and railroad entrepreneur.

Jason Gould was born May 27, 1836 in Roxbury, New York to Mary (Moore) and John Burr Gould. As a young man, Gould helped prepare maps of several counties in New York, Ohio and Michigan. In 1856, he wrote History of Delaware County, and Border Wars of New York, a work which explored the local history of the region. Around 1857, Gould opened a tannery in northern Pennsylvania. He soon began speculating in small railways. Gould and James Fisk joined the directorate of the Erie Railroad in 1867. Shortly after, the partners strategically named Peter Sweeney and William (Boss) Tweed directors. The two directors, particularly Tweed, were able to use their leverage in politics to arrange favorable legislation for the railroad. Gould was eventually forced out of the Erie Railroad corporation, but merely shifted his speculative interests to other business such as the Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific railroad, Western Union Telegraph Company, and the New York World.

Gould was married to Helen Day Miller with whom he had 6 children, George Jay, Edwin, Helen, Howard, Anna , and Frank Jay Gould. He died December 2, 1892 of tuberculosis at the age of 57.