Gould, JAY

Gould, JAY, American financier, was born, the son of a farmer, at Roxbury, New York, 27th May 1836. He made a survey of parts of the state, engaged for a short period in lumbering, and accumulated enough capital to become in 1857 the principal shareholder in the bank of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. He now began to buy up railroad bonds, and in 1859 established himself as a broker in New York city. He was president of the Erie railway company till 1872, and afterwards invested largely in the stocks of other railways and telegraph companies. In 1882, a question of his commercial stability having arisen, he took the effective step of producing stock certificates having a face value of 53,000,000, and offered to produce 20,000,000 more; in 1887 it was estimated that he controlled over 13,000 miles of railway. He died unlamented, 2d December 1892, worth some $50,000,000.