JAY GOULD'S BOYHOOD
The founder of this fortune was Jay Gould, father of the present holding generation. He was the son of a farmer in Delaware County, New York, and was born in 1836. As a child his lot was to do various chores on his father's farm. In driving the cows he had to go barefoot, perforce, by reason of poverty, and often thistles bruised his feet—a trial which seems to have left such a poignant and indelible impression upon his mind that when testifying before a United States Senate investigating committee forty years later he pathetically spoke of it with a reminiscent quivering. His father was, indeed, so poor that he could not afford to let him go to the public school. The lad, however, made an arrangement with a blacksmith by which he received board in return for certain clerical services. These did not interfere with his attending school. When fifteen, he became a clerk in a country store, a task which, he related, kept him at work from six o'clock in the morning until ten o'clock at night. It is further related that by getting up at three o'clock in the morning and studying mathematics for three years, he learned the rudiments of surveying.
According to Gould's own story, an engineer who was making a map of Ulster County hired him as an assistant at "twenty dollars a month and found." This engagement somehow (we are not informed how) turned out unsatisfactorily. Gould was forced to support himself by making "noon marks" for the farmers. To two other young men who had worked with him upon the map of Ulster County, Gould (as narrated by himself) sold his interest for $500, and with this sum as capital he proceeded to make maps of Albany and Delaware counties. These maps, if we may believe his own statement, he sold for $5,000.