YOUTH AND ANCESTRY OF JAY GOULD.
Many who knew Mr. Gould intimately are in the habit of asserting that
his origin must have been Hebraic. No one pretends to say how many
generations back the Jewish blood was in the family, or that Mr. Gould
was aware of its existence in him. But both his names, Jason, or Jay,
and Gould, served to strengthen this belief in those who held it. The
twisted form, “Gould,” was suspected of being changed from “Gold,”
which is a common prefix in the names of inanimate and natural objects
which certain Jews in Europe were compelled to adopt as surnames in one
period of their history. His habits of thought and his extraordinary
intellect were both Jewish, these people assert, with how much or how
little basis in the actual fact of his origin, no one can ever decide.
Mr. Gould was certainly American in the character and extent of his
self-creation and success. Born of poor parents, on a poorer farm, he
began to make money to pay his way through school, and he was a partner
in business enterprises while yet a lad.
[Illustration: YOUNG GOULD IN HIS FATHER’S DAIRY.]
But so far as Mr. Gould himself has been able to decide, he came of
Puritan stock than which none is more diametrically removed from the
Hebraic. He was born on May 27, 1836, in the little post-village
of Roxbury, Delaware county, New York state. Nearly half a century
before, while Delaware, Ulster and Otsego counties were yet one, his
grandfather came with half a dozen Puritan families from Fairfield
county, Connecticut, and took up land near the land which became Jay
Gould’s birth-place. This grandfather was Captain Abram Gould. He had
been a Revolutionary soldier and was described as a “grim, earnest,
honest man.” To him was born in 1792, a son who was named John B.
Gould, the first male child born in the new settlement. John B. grew
to manhood, was three times married, and Jay was his son by his first
wife. The boy’s mother was a pious woman, a regular attendant of the
Methodist services held in the “yaller meetin’ house,” where Jay also
imbibed such religious notions as found a foothold in a nature not much
given to the contemplation of spiritual things. The father was a small
farmer and kept a dairy of twenty cows.
Until he was fourteen years old Jay lived on the farm, picking up
such a meager education as attendance from four to five years at a
district school, which was closed during the greater part of the year,
afforded. This school was finally closed altogether by the breaking out
of the “Anti-rent War,” as it was called, an uprising of the farmers
against the efforts of persons who claimed to have bought the land from
the Indians to collect an annual rental. Jay was dissatisfied with
farm life, which indeed offered nothing, under the circumstances, to
satisfy his boyish ambitions. The reasons of his dissatisfaction he
once set forth as follows:
“As I was the boy of the family I generally brought the cows in the
morning and assisted my sister to milk them and drove them back, and
went for them again at night. I went barefooted and I used to get
thistles in my feet, and I did not like farming in that way. So I said
one day to my father that I would like to go to a select school that
was some twelve or fifteen miles from there. He said all right, but
that I was too young. I said to him that if he would give me my time, I
would try my fortune. He said all right, that I was not worth much at
home and I might go ahead. So next day I started off. I showed myself
up at this school, and finally I found a blacksmith who consented to
board me, as I wrote a pretty good hand, if I could write up his books
at night. In that way I worked myself through this school.”
During these years of the embryo financier, he was a pale, slender,
delicate little fellow, studiously inclined and disliking the
customary sports as much as the toil of the people around him. It is
remembered of him that he was different from the other boys with whom
he associated in school. He was not what is generally termed a manly
boy. He kept out of the rough good-natured games. He preferred to
remain indoors, and at noontime cuddled up in some remote corner of
the school-house, busy about nobody knew what. When approached by the
others with invitations to come and join them, he would refuse. If in
banter the boys attempted to force him to join them, he would make a
great outcry, and breaking away from them, would sit and mope until the
school was called to order. Then he would go to the master’s chair and
enter a tearful complaint against his enemies. The master would thrash
the other fellows, and little Gould would be tickled.
It was because his father became unpopular in the village by opposing
the anti-rent movement at that time, that young Gould was obliged to
leave the school nearest his home. He waited until he was fourteen
years old. Then, after pondering over his prospects, he formed a
resolution, and at once put it into practice by asking his father’s
permission to leave home, saying that he was confident in his ability
to take care of himself. His father was inclined to be amused at the
boy’s request, which was made with much earnestness, and thinking that
it was a mere passing whim, returned a careless affirmative. The family
were astounded, however, the next morning, when little Jay entered the
breakfast room equipped for his journey out into the world. He ate his
breakfast quietly and, arising from the table, held out his hand to his
father with a hearty “good-bye, father.” His father was amazed at his
determination, and his stepmother and sisters entreated him tearfully
to remain at home. Unshaken in purpose, however, the future “Wizard of
Wall Street” hastily caught up his little bundle and left his parent’s
house. His bundle contained a spare suit of clothes, and he had fifty
cents in his pocket.
Young Jay trudged hopefully through the mountainous road between
Roxbury and Hobart, where there was an academy that he had long desired
to enter. He went directly to the principal of the academy and told him
of his anxiety to obtain an education and his desire to get employment
that he might earn money to pay the tuition fees. The principal became
interested in the boy and secured for him the position of bookkeeper
in a store kept by the village blacksmith. This school was kept by Mr.
Oliver, and Jay’s course there was completed in 1851. During this year,
however, he must have made considerable progress in mathematics, in
spite of the fact that it used to be related of him in the neighborhood
that he grew tired once of going to school, and was locked up one
morning in the cellar by his father as a measure of correction, and
forgotten until his non-return in the evening caused comment. The
taste for mathematics it was that opened up to him the first steadily
lucrative employment in which he became engaged, and also led him, by
easy steps, into the career which destiny seemed to have marked out for
him.
On leaving school he got a place as a clerk in a tin shop in Hobart,
and at fifteen years of age was a partner in and manager of the
business. Not only that, but this amazing boy was up at daybreak every
day to pursue the study of surveying and such engineering as he found
books and instruments to help him to. Moreover, when the elder Gould
sold his farm, young Jay took him into the tin shop on a salary.
Innumerable anecdotes are related of Jay’s early life. All the world
has heard the mouse-trap story. It was in 1853, when the World’s
Exhibition was held in New York, that young Gould, then about seventeen
years of age, is said to have made his first visit to the metropolis
in which he was to become such a power. He carried with him a showy
mahogany case, containing an invention which the boy hoped would bring
him fame and fortune. The invention was a mouse-trap. He entered a
horse-car and, leaving his valuable model on the seat, stepped outside
and stood on the platform, where he could view the glories of the great
city. The box was picked up by a thief, but not without the observation
of young Gould, who pursued the rascal and captured him. This exploit
was related next day in the _Herald_, this being the first newspaper
reference to Gould, whose renown has since filled columns of the daily
press for years. The mouse-trap was a success, but its inventor has
been far more successful with his future traps, which he laid for
speculative mice, and with which he caught them all his life.
That Gould’s great fortune was not the result of a streak of luck, but
of strict attention to business and hard work, is clearly proved in all
the events of his life. His plans were the result of careful thought
and they were carried out by hard work. The man in whose family young
Gould worked for his board when going to school thus speaks of his
conduct at that early date:
“He was an excellent boy. His habits were good and he devoted most of
his evenings to study. He was always the first one up in the morning,
and he had the fire burning and the tea-kettle boiling by the time my
wife was ready to prepare breakfast.”
It was while working in the tin store, shortly after this, that Gould
took part in a transaction in which one cannot fail to recognize one of
the distinctive traits of his future business career. If the king of
Wall street never went hunting for snipes with a brass band, neither
did the country lad. The merchant for whom he was working also did a
real-estate business. His employer was negotiating for the purchase
of some property belonging to an estate in chancery, and Jay carried
on the correspondence for him. By virtue of his position he thus
learned the particulars of a bargain which his employer desired to
make on the piece of land. The executor demanded twenty-five hundred
dollars, but the would-be purchaser offered only two thousand dollars.
Jay undertook a little investigation on private account, and became
convinced that the property was bound to appreciate in value. While
the negotiations were in progress, Jay borrowed twenty-five hundred
dollars of his father, and outbidding his employer, quietly scooped
in the property. He had the deed made out in his father’s name, and
within two weeks sold out for four thousand dollars. It is said that
his employer looked at the transaction in the light of a breach of
confidence. The result was that it caused a separation between the
merchant and his clerk, and broke up a little romance which is said to
have existed between the young speculator and a young female member of
his employer’s family.
This was practically the end of his life and associations with the
little villages, Roxbury and Hobart, though his map work and surveying,
in the following years, were largely done in the surrounding counties.
As a matter of fact, he had exhausted the possibilities for him in
those country villages. He had squeezed what knowledge and profits were
to be obtained there, and was ready to seek new worlds to conquer.
While the little towns furnished him no inducements for permanent
residence, and but little of the start toward his colossal fortune,
nevertheless, the influences that the towns and their people exerted
on his early life must be credited with much of the better business
qualities, of perseverance and method that gave much of his success in
later years.
Gould’s mother died in 1841, when he was but five years old. His father
died in 1866, and some years ago their distinguished son erected
over their graves a handsome monument in the village cemetery. The
elder Gould had a farm of about one hundred and fifty acres, and was
esteemed by his neighbors as a worthy citizen. The house in which Jay
was born and spent his boyhood is described as a “two-story, box-like
frame building covered with a coating of white paint.” In July, 1880,
Jay Gould visited his birth-place and also Hobart, where he went to
school. He used to walk the entire distance to school every Monday
morning, returning Saturdays. He was enthusiastically received by the
inhabitants at the time of his visit, as the most noted man ever born
in that region. When he visited the old house, it is to be wondered
if he recalled the first instance in which he ever showed a combative
spirit of bravery. It was during the Anti-rent War, when a party of
anti-renters visited his father’s house to compel him to cease paying
rent, John B. Gould and a neighbor, Hiram Moore, belonging to the
conservative farmers, known as “high-renters.” The “rebels” were masked
and in bad temper, but John B. Gould stood out stoutly for his rights,
while ten-year-old Jay, who stood in the doorway at his side, urged his
father to shoot his assailants down. John B., like the son in manhood,
was small of stature, and had the additional misfortune of having one
leg shorter than the other, but he probably inherited some of the
rugged qualities of grim Captain Abram, and these were likely to be
accentuated by the struggle for existence in the rough sterile country
of their habitation. The vigilance committee, at any rate, left the
little man unharmed, though they promptly proceeded to tar and feather
his neighbor, Hiram Moore.
These anti-rent troubles were caused by the refusal of the occupants
of certain large tracts of land in Delaware and adjacent counties, to
pay an annual rental to persons who claimed to have purchased the land
from the Indians. Such rentals had been paid with a fair degree of
regularity up to 1844, when the farmers rebelled, declaring that the
exactions were oppressive and unlawful. In some cases the rent exacted
had consisted of so many bushels of wheat, a certain number of fowls or
a few days’ labor per year. In other cases cash payments were demanded.
Secret organizations were formed in Delaware county, and some of the
aggressive movements were particularly directed toward John B. Gould,
who declined to join the anti-rent party. The officers of the law were
resisted in their attempts to levy on or sell property for non-payment
of rent. The anti-rent men claimed that the land really belonged to the
Indians, and they armed themselves and went about the country disguised
as Indians. They carried tomahawks and applied tar and feathers to
several men whom they accused of persecuting them. Mr. Gould had in
his possession for many years one of the tomahawks that was brandished
by the Roxbury “Indians,” and he could readily recall the events that
preceded and followed the battle of Shacksville, in which a body of
armed anti-renters, in resisting a sheriff’s posse, killed several
men. Gov. Silas Wright was then obliged to declare several counties
in a state of insurrection and many arrests were made. The state
authorities overcame armed resistance, but the anti-rent men carried
their grievance into politics and succeeded in electing John Young for
Governor over Silas Wright.
Mr. Gould used to tell his intimate friends that whatever nerve he
possessed he inherited from his father.
While working at the tin shop, young Gould retained all his fondness
for mathematics, and mastered several of the best authorities on
surveying, trigonometry and engineering, besides reading a course of
history. He rose at four in the morning, and devoted the time he could
call his own to reading and study. Having made a particularly nice
tin whistle, he invited the boys of the town to join him in amateur
surveying expeditions, and with a borrowed compass and other necessary
instruments, the boys acting as flagmen and chain-bearers, he soon
became an expert surveyor. In the tin business he made himself so
useful that at the age of fifteen he was a full partner in the concern,
and when he visited Albany and New York to purchase material, he
succeeded in opening accounts with Phelps, Dodge & Co. and other firms
well-known to the public.
It was at this point in young Gould’s career that the unvarying routine
of life in a tin shop became too monotonous, and he abandoned it for
a pursuit that would at least enable him to see something of the
surrounding country, and possibly be more profitable. He decided to
make use of the knowledge that he had gained and become a surveyor.
[Illustration: JAY GOULD AS A SURVEYOR.]