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.