Received of Oliver J. Tillson and Peter H. Brink ninety dollars and wheel in full of all debts and demands and dues against them and the Ulster county map.
Jason Gould,
for John B. Gould.
It will be observed that he signed his name “Jason,” not Jay. He was christened “Jason,” but about this time began to change it to Jay, by which he was ever after known. “There wasn’t any foolishness in Jason’s books,” says Mr. Tillson, referring to the books in which Gould had made his notes of the surveys. “He was all business in those days, as he is now. Why, even at meal times he was always talking map. He was a worker, and my father used to say: ‘Look at Gould; isn’t he a driver?’”
CANVASSING FOR HIS BOOK “HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY.”
This, in fact, is the testimony of all his contemporaries. From his earlier years he was absorbed in schemes for making money, and his whole aim in life was to “get on.” With every passing year his ambition broadened, until it enveloped a continent.
It is a striking coincidence that young Gould and his two partners in the map business were sued by the man who first employed the former in the project, and they placed their case in the hands of Lawyer T. R. Westbrook, who succeeded in having the suit dismissed. Westbrook afterward became (and this is the coincidence) the supreme court judge, who years after scandalized the legal profession by holding court in Jay Gould’s private office and issuing an order in one of the Manhattan railway litigations.
He and his cousin, with whom he entered into partnership at Albany, increased the map business to the extent of sending surveyors into various portions of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, but afterward the contracts were transferred to a surveyor in Philadelphia.
From this time he was continuously employed as a surveyor, until a severe attack of typhoid fever compelled him to give up outdoor exposure. He had determined to make a complete survey of the entire state of New York, and he did complete maps of Albany county, the village of Cohoes, the Albany and Niscayuna Plank road and Delaware county. He also surveyed Lake and Geauga counties in Ohio, Oakland county in Michigan, and a proposed railroad from Newburg to Syracuse. Then he was seriously ill for several months, but his money was not used up, and he wrote with some degree of interest and also profit a history of Delaware county and partial histories of Greene, Ulster and Sullivan counties.
Gould had gathered his ideas of casual writing from a brief experience in a country newspaper office, where he had worked gratuitously. The history of Delaware county was four hundred pages long, and is said to have been an exceedingly creditable performance, both as an example of diligence and care in the collection of facts and skill and taste in the literary presentation of them. It never came into general circulation, however, probably because the printer, who lived in Philadelphia, insisted, in spite of “copy” and proof corrections, in spelling the name of the author “Gold.” When the books arrived in Roxbury and the young historian discovered the blunder he shipped them all back to the manufacturer and would have nothing more to do with them.