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.
JAY GOULD AS A SURVEYOR.
CHAPTER III.
GOULD AS SURVEYOR AND HISTORIAN.
The tin shop was profitable but slow, and with an outcropping of the avidity which he afterward showed, he sought for something more lucrative. In 1852 he transferred his interest to his father and arranged to take charge of a surveying party at twenty dollars a month. Gould had heard of a man in Ulster county who was looking for an assistant. He was making a map of that county and Gould wrote to him. When he left home to take the position, his father offered him money, but he left all his capital in the store, burned his ships behind him, and took only money enough to pay his fare to the place where the new position was to begin. His new employer started him out to make the surveys, to see where the roads were and to locate the residences. He also instructed young Gould to get trusted for his living expenses along the way, and that he would pay them following after him. Two or three days later, Gould ran against the first objection to this arrangement from one of his entertainers, who knew that the employer had already failed three times. He agreed to trust young Gould but would not trust the employer. The boy wandered on after this rebuff until three o’clock, before making an effort to get his dinner. His wretchedness and its relief are interestingly told in a letter that Mr. Gould wrote to a friend some years later.
“I was out of money—that is to say, every cent I had at my command was a ten-cent piece, with which I had determined not to part. Fall was approaching, and, unless our surveys were completed before winter set in, the final completion of our enterprise would be necessarily delayed until another season, subjecting us to additional expense, which I feared would prove hazardous to the enterprise. I was among entire strangers and consequently without credit. I could not spare time to go to Delaware county after funds, and I had not money to reach there. If tears had been coin my empty coffers would soon have been amply replenished. In this emergency a welcome expedient accidentally presented itself. I was prosecuting my surveys at this time in the town of Shawangunk, and, while the tears were even trickling down my cheek, a farmer came running after me and asked me if I would not return with him to dinner and make a ‘noon mark,’ which is a north and south line, to indicate, by the shadow caused by the rays falling against an upright object and striking the line, the hour of midday. I accepted the invitation with pleasure, as a couple of crackers was all I had eaten since the preceding night, and I had been working since daylight and was consequently hungry and faint. After dinner I made the noon mark, and, turning to leave, the farmer asked me my bill. I replied that he ‘was welcome.’ He insisted, however, on paying me a half dollar, which he assured me a neighbor had paid for one, which I accepted, and started on my way, and had I that moment discovered a continent it would have afforded me less joy. I saw that I could turn this discovery to practical account, and I felt already half rich, and I prosecuted my labors with a lighter step than for many a day. The fame of my noon marks preceded me, and the applications from the farmers were numerous. By this means I paid all the expenses of the surveys and came out at the completion with six dollars in my pocket.”
In the early part of this embarrassment he had no overcoat and sometimes traveled forty miles a day on foot. His employer failed completely and Gould continued the business for himself. Jay proposed to the two other young surveyors, who had also been engaged on the work, to complete it on their own account. The other two young fellows had money, and when the map was ready for the engraver, Jay, finding his colleagues anxious to put their names on it, sold his interest to them for $500. With that capital he undertook similar surveys of Albany and Delaware counties, and was successful in turning out satisfactory maps of those regions. He sold enough maps to bring his capital up to $5,000. The accuracy of his survey of Ulster county in the meantime, had attracted the attention of John Delafield, in Albany, who applied to the Legislature for aid in the completion of a topographical survey of the entire state by Mr. Gould. Mr. Delafield died before any material progress was made in this work. His application to the Legislature was not successful. Some particulars of interest in regard to the map-making business are related by Oliver J. Tillson, one of his partners in the map-making enterprise, after the failure of the man who had first employed him in the business. Mr. Tillson confirms Mr. Gould’s account and tells of the bargain in which the latter sold out to his partners. Here is a copy of a receipt given by Gould on that occasion:
December 27, 1852.