CHAPTER 2: ANCESTORS
1. New York Sun. 28 November 1880.
2. Daughters of the American Revolution lineage records. Vol. 28, p. 297, #27811.
3. Major Nathan Gold was born 1625 in Langley, Herts., England, the son of John and Judith Gould.
4. Nathan Gold first married Martha Harvey, who died in 1658 without issue. He then married Sarah Phippen, a native of Dorset, England, in 1660. They had six children, of whom Nathan Gold, Jr., was the only son. Nathan Gold died in either 1693 or 1694 in Fairfield.
5. Nathan Gould, Jr., was born 2 December 1663 in Fairfield and died 3 October 1723.
6. The children of Nathan, Jr., and Hannah included Hezekiah, who became a minister. He graduated from Harvard College in 1719 and died in 1761. He was married to Mary Ruggles, the daughter of Rev. Thomas Ruggles, Sr., of Guilford and seems to have spent most of his adult life in Guilford. Hezekiah had a son, also named Hezekiah, who graduated from Yale in 1752 and went into the ministry. This Hezekiah spent most of his life in Cornwall, Conn., and died in 1790. Nathan, Jr., and Hannah also had a daughter, Abigail, who married Thomas Hawley in Fairfield in 1712.
7. Samuel Gold died 11 October 1769 in Fairfield.
8. The children of Samuel and Esther Gold were Daniel, born 11 July 1717 in Fairfield, died in 1775 in that same town; Esther, born 13 October 1719 in Fairfield, died 1 August 1770 in that same town; Abigail, born 27 April 1724 in Fairfield, with no death information available; Abel, born 14 September 1727 in Fairfield, died 11 November 1789 in that same town; Abraham, born 12 October 1730 in Fairfield, died six weeks later on 26 November 1730 in that same town; and then another Abraham, great-grandfather of Jay Gould, born 10 May 1732 in Fairfield, died 25 April 1777 in battle at Ridgefield.
9. Elizabeth Burr was born 7 April 1732 in Fairfield, Conn. She died in that same town on 5 September 1815. Like her husband and most of her offspring, Elizabeth rests in the Old Burying Ground, Fairfield. The Gold/Gould genealogy for this generation is fairly laced with Burr connections. Abraham’s eldest brother, Daniel, married Elizabeth’s cousin, Grace Burr. Another brother, Abel, married yet another of Fairfield’s numerous Burrs, Ellen, the daughter of Samuel Burr.
10. Abigail Gould was born in October 1755 in Fairfield. She died in that same town on 2 November 1795. Elizabeth Gould was born 5 February 1759 in Fairfield. She died on 19 June 1812 in that same town. Deborah Gould was born on 25 July 1763 in Fairfield. She died on 28 July 1785 in that same town. Anna Gould was born 5 December 1768 in Fairfield. She died at Hobart, Delaware County, N.Y., on 2 October 1821.
11. This Hezekiah Gould was born 9 December 1756 in Fairfield. He died 30 October 1785 in New York Harbor, drowned. John Burr Gould was born 7 April 1761 in Fairfield. He died at sea on 2 January 1781. Daniel Gould was born 16 July 1776 in Fairfield. He died on 28 December 1796 in a storm off the coast of France.
12. Jason Gould was born in 1774 in Fairfield. He died in that same town on 17 June 1810. In 1840 his son, Captain John Gould, owner of a fleet of schooners plying the China trade, replaced Elizabeth Burr Gold’s rebuilt Revolutionary-era house with a large mansion. This he eventually left to his two daughters, the last of the Fairfield Goulds, both of whom died in 1908 without issue. From 1908 through 1977 the Jason Gould mansion, known as the Gould Homestead, provided, under the terms of the daughters’ wills, a free vacation home to working women of Fairfield County. For more information on the Goulds of Fairfield see the Gould Family Papers at the Fairfield Historical Society. The elaborate home of Elizabeth Burr Gould’s cousin Thaddeus Burr still stands in Fairfield, where it is owned by the town and administered by the Fairfield Historical Society.
13. Abraham Gould, Jr., was born 28 January 1766 in Fairfield, Conn. He died 23 December 1823 in Roxbury, N.Y.
14. W. W. Munsell. History of Delaware County, 1757–1880. New York: W. W. Munsell. 1880. 72.
15. Jay Gould. History of Delaware County and the Border Wars of New York. Roxbury: Keeny & Gould. 1856. 102.
16. Abraham Gould, Jr.’s sister Anna Gould, together with her husband, Eben Silliman, followed Abraham to West Settlement in 1810.
17. New York Times. 15 August 1888.
18. John Burroughs. Pepacton and Other Sketches. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1881. iv.
19. All told, the children of Captain Abraham Gould, Jr., and Anna Osborne were Elizabeth Gould, born 17 May 1790 and died 11 July 1867; John Burr Gould, born 16 October 1792, died 16 March 1866; Anna Gould, born 20 August 1794, died 9 March 1828; Abigail Gould, born 20 June 1796, for whom no death information is available; Polly Gould, born 27 April 1798, died 3 April 1811; Katherine Gould, born 20 March 1800, died 25 January 1837; Jason Gould, born 23 November 1802, died 3 January 1864; Abraham Gould III, born 3 November 1803, died 9 May 1812; Daniel Gould, born 4 October 1801, died 3 January 1849; and Sally Gould, born 13 September 1810, died 25 November 1824. Daniel, who appears to have reverted to the old “Gold” spelling of the family name, achieved some success as deputy clerk of the Assembly of New York State, and later, at the time of his death, deputy clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. Jason Gould emigrated to Canada, where many of his descendants still reside.
20. Robert Irving Warshow. Jay Gould, or The Story of a Fortune. New York: Greenberg. 1928. 18.
21. Born 5 January 1775, Jay Gould’s maternal grandfather, Alexander Taylor More, died 11 March 1854. He is buried, along with a vast collection of Mores, in the so-called Old Cemetery at Grand Gorge, near the Methodist Church.
CHAPTER 3: TWELVE LINES BY NIGHT
1. Clara Barrus. John Burroughs: Boy and Man. Garden City: Doubleday. Page. 1920. 97.
2. Sarah Gould Northrop. “Reminiscences.” HGS.
3. Anna Gould Howe. “Mrs. Howe’s Reminiscences.” HGS.
4. Sarah Gould Northrop. “Reminiscences.” HGS.
5. Anna Gould Howe. “Mrs. Howe’s Reminiscences.” HGS.
6. Eliza’s maiden name is unknown. The Gould family marker at the Old School Baptist Church Cemetery indicates her passing on 19 December 1841 at the age of 29.
7. Sarah Gould Northrop. “Reminiscences.” HGS.
8. Jay Gould. History of Delaware County and the Border Wars of New York. 115.
9. Ibid. 120. Additional detail for the tale as presented here come from Hamilton Burhans’s manuscript memoir “Early Days of Jay Gould.” HGS.
10. Elizabeth Gould Palen to Anna Palen. 25 March 1893. HGS.
11. John Burroughs. My Boyhood. Garden City: Doubleday, Page. 1922. 40.
12. Clara Barrus. John Burroughs: Boy and Man. 211.
13. John Burroughs. My Boyhood. 37.
CHAPTER 4: A DELIBERATE STUDENT
1. Sarah Gould Northrop. “Reminiscences.” HGS.
2. Hamilton Burhans. “Early Days of Jay Gould.” HGS.
3. Sarah Gould Northrop. “Reminiscences.” HGS.
4. Anna Gould Howe. “Mrs. Howe’s Reminiscences.” HGS.
5. John Burroughs. My Boyhood. 114.
6. Jay Gould. History of Delaware County and the Borders Wars of New York. 320.
7. Frank Allaben. “Was Jay Gould Misjudged?” National Magazine (May-June 1893). 84–85.
8. Robert Irving Warshow. Jay Gould, or The Story of a Fortune. 22–24. This same essay is also published in Angell v. Gould. New York: Privately printed. 1897. Angell v. Gould contains extensive research underwritten by the Gould family in the late 1890s in order to combat a spurious paternity suit involving Jay Gould. In connection with their investigation, Gould lawyers and detectives scoured the Catskills interviewing old friends, acquaintances and relatives of Jay Gould, gathering written testimony and archival documents from same.
9. Sarah Gould Northrop. “Reminiscences.” HGS.
10. The building that housed the tin shop still stands on Roxbury’s Main Street and is now the Enderlin Gallery. Around the corner, on Vega Mountain Road, the house involved in the swap still stands as well.
11. Sarah Gould to Edmund More. 29 Februa
ry 1852. HGS.
12. Abel Crosby to Helen Gould. 20 May 1897. HGS.
13. Sarah Gould Northrop. “Reminiscences.” HGS.
14. Report of the Committee of the Senate upon the Relations Between Labor and Capital, Senate Hearings. 41st Congress, Vol. 28. 1063–1064.
15. Angell v. Gould. 163–167.
16. Ibid. 177.
17. Ibid. 185–189.
18. Ibid. 642–645.
19. J. W. McLaury. “Reminiscences Composed for Miss Helen Gould.” HGS.
CHAPTER 5: RAT TRAPS AND MAPS
1. Angell v. Gould. 767.
2. At Union College, Rice was a student of the eminent Eliphalet Nott (1773–1866).
3. Angell v. Gould. 769.
4. Anna Gould Howe. “Mrs. Howe’s Reminiscences.” HGS.
5. Abel Crosby to Helen Gould. 20 May 1897. HGS.
6. Robert Irving Warshow. Jay Gould, or The Story of a Fortune. 34.
7. Jay Gould to John D. Champlin. 6 December 1853. HGS.
8. Robert Irving Warshow. Jay Gould, or The Story of a Fortune. 31.
9. Angell v. Gould. 702.
10. Ibid. 480.
11. Ibid. 226–227.
12. Ibid. 776–784.
13. Ibid. 660–669.
14. Polly Gould to Sarah Gould Northrop. 22 July 1854. HGS. One of the few existing copies of Jay Gould’s Delaware County map is today on permanent display in the stairwell leading to the basement of the Jay Gould Memorial Reformed Church in Roxbury, N.Y.
15. Polly Gould to Sarah Gould Northrop. 2 August 1854. HGS.
16. Angell v. Gould. 669–671.
17. Ibid. 456.
18. Ibid. 672–676.
19. “The Railroad King Dead.” Stamford (New York) Mirror. 5 December 1892. Stamford Mirror publisher and editor, Simon Champion, who had previously served the same role for the Bloomville Mirror, quoted much from their early correspondence in his version of Jay’s obituary.
CHAPTER 6: HIDDEN MYSTERIES OF LIFE AND DEATH
1. Jay Gould to Simon D. Champion. 29 March 1855. HGS.
2. John Burroughs to Helen Gould Shepard. 7 July 1914. HGS.
3. Numerous previous biographies of Jay Gould cite this gentleman’s name as McLany. Existing records of the old Roxbury Academy, as well as contemporary newspaper pieces, the Dartmouth College archives, and McLaury’s own memoir in the Helen Gould Shepard Papers at the New-York Historical Society suggest otherwise.
4. J. W. McLaury. “Reminiscences Composed for Miss Helen Gould.” HGS.
5. Alice Northrop Snow and Henry Nicholas Snow. The Story of Helen Gould. 61.
6. Hamilton Burhans. “Early Days of Jay Gould.” HGS.
7. Angell v. Gould. 300.
8. Ibid. 295.
9. Elizabeth Gould Palen to Anna Palen. 25 March 1893. HGS.
10. Hamilton Burhans. “Early Days of Jay Gould.” 6. HGS.
11. Angell v. Gould. 641.
12. Clara Barrus. John Burroughs: Boy and Man. 210.
13. John Burroughs. My Boyhood. 39.
14. J. W. McLaury. “Reminiscences Composed for Miss Helen Gould.” HGS.
CHAPTER 7: GOULDSBORO
1. For details on the Palen family and their tanning history, see D. S. Rotenstein. “Tanbark Tycoons: Palen Family Sullivan County, New York Tanneries, 1832–1871.” The Hudson Valley Regional Review. 15(2). 1–42.
2. Although many different trees contain tannic acid in their bark, the variety of tannic acid found in the inner bark layers of the hemlock are preferred, as they leave pelts with a distinctive and highly desirable red tint.
3. Henry David Thoreau. Manuscript journal, 1844. Thoreau Papers. J. Pierpont Morgan Library.
4. The best overall consideration of Zadock Pratt and his career is to be found in Patricia E. Millen’s Bare Trees: Zadock Pratt, Master Tanner and the Story of What Happened to the Catskill Mountain Forests (Hensonville, N.Y.: Black Dome Press, 1995). See also Chronological Biography of the Hon. Zadock Pratt of Prattsville, NY (New York: Shoe and Leather Press, 1868), which was largely dictated by Pratt himself.
5. Zadock Pratt. “Autobiographical Outline.” Zadock Pratt Papers, New-York Historical Society. (Hereafter ZPP.)
6. Patricia E. Millen. Bare Trees. 15.
7. Carolyn Bennett to Edward J. Renehan, Jr. 19 March 2004.
8. J. W. McLaury. “Reminiscences Composed for Miss Helen Gould.” HGS.
9. Elizabeth Gould Palen to Anne Palen. 25 March 1893. HGS.
10. Peter Van Amburgh to Helen Gould. 19 December 1892. HGS.
11. Jay Gould to Zadock Pratt. 5 September 1856. Ingersoll. The original site of the tannery is not in today’s Gouldsboro, but 9.5 miles to the west, in the village now known as Thornhurst.
CHAPTER 8: OUR BEST FRIENDS TELL US OUR FAULTS
1. Jay Gould to Zadock Pratt. 24 December 1856. Ingersoll.
2. Jay Gould to Zadock Pratt. 15 August 1857. Ingersoll.
3. Jay Gould to Zadock Pratt. 12 October 1857. Ingersoll.
4. Zadock Pratt. “Autobiographical Outline.” ZPP.
5. Jay Gould to John Burr Gould. 7 August 1857. HGS.
6. Jay Gould to Hamilton Burhans. 26 September 1857. HGS.
7. Jay Gould to Zadock Pratt. 22 October 1857. Ingersoll.
8. Jay Gould to Zadock Pratt. 11 December 1857. ZPP.
9. Jay Gould to Zadock Pratt. 15 September 1858. Ingersoll.
10. Report of the Committee of the Senate upon the Relations Between Labor and Capital, Senate Hearings. 41st Congress, Vol. 28. 1065.
11. Maury Klein was the first to document this clearly in his Life and Legend of Jay Gould.
12. Charles R. Geisst. Wall Street: A History. New York: Oxford University Press. 1997. 58. That Geisst got this and other Jay Gould–related stories so wrong is remarkable given that Maury Klein, the first to get most of the history of Gould’s tanning enterprises right, published his Life and Legend of Jay Gould in 1986, a full eleven years before Geisst’s volume appeared. Klein’s seminal book is not referenced in Geisst’s pages. My discussion of the Pratt & Gould dissolution, though differing from Klein’s in a few details, derives in a large way from Klein’s investigations of the 1980s.
13. Robert I. Warshow. Jay Gould, or The Story of a Fortune. 46–47.
14. Richard O’Connor. Gould’s Millions. 28.
15. Robert I. Warshow. Jay Gould, or The Story of a Fortune. 46.
16. Statement of John Gardner. HGS.
17. These figures comes from Hamilton Burhans’s manuscript memoir, “Early Days of Jay Gould,” in the Helen Gould Shepard Papers at the New York Historical Society. Burhans must have gotten the numbers from Gould himself near the time of the actual event.
CHAPTER 9: CUNNING LUNACY
1. Gideon Lee’s papers are in the Clements Library of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
2. Charles M. Leupp’s papers are to be found in the Leupp Family Collection, Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. (Hereafter LFP.)
3. David W. Lee to Thomas G. Clemson. 11 October 1859. Thomas G. Clemson Papers, Clemson University Library. (Hereafter Clemson.)
4. “Local Accounts of the Gouldsboro War.” HGS.
5. Jay Gould to Leupp & Company. 13 June 1859. LFP.
6. David W. Lee to Thomas G. Clemson. 11 October 1859. Clemson.
7. New York Herald. 7 October 1859.
8. Laura Leupp to Mrs. Thomas B. Clemson. 6 October 1859. Clemson.
9. New York Herald. 7 October 1859.
10. As with so many other aspects of Gould’s business history, the first writer to get the essential facts of Jay’s relations with Leupp & Company set down on paper correctly was Maury Klein in his 1986 volume The Life and Legend of Jay Gould. My analysis of the Leupp-Gould affair, like my analysis of the Pratt & Gould dissolution, draws in large part from Klein’s version of the story, although differing in some details.
11. Richard O’Connor. Gould’s Millions. 30–31.
12. Charles R. G
eisst. Wall Street: A History. 59. Once again, it needs to be pointed out that Geisst was writing eleven years after Klein documented the true story in his Life and Legend of Jay Gould.
13. Edwin Hoyt. The Goulds. New York: Weybright & Talley. 1969. 23.
14. New York Tribune. 16 September 1889.
CHAPTER 10: THE GOULDSBORO WAR
1. Somewhat ironically, given Evarts’s representation of Andrew Johnson during the 1868 impeachment proceedings, Evarts’s great-grandson Archibald Cox served as the first special prosecutor named in the Watergate investigation a little more than one hundred years later.
2. Jay Gould to Leupp & Company. 27 December 1859. LFP.
3. Jay Gould to Sarah Gould Northrop. 11 January 1860. HGS.
4. R. G. Dun & Company. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. (Hereafter Dun.) New York City branch files. 193:655.
5. Leupp & Company to Jay Gould. 29 December 1859. HGS.
6. New York Herald. 16 March 1860.
7. Dun. New York City branch files. 193:660.
8. Ibid. 347:737.
9. The Henry Davenport Northrop who wrote the potboiler biography Jay Gould, The Wizard of Wall Street (Philadelphia: National Publishing, 1892) was no relation.
10. Angell v. Gould. 145.
11. Sarah Gould Northrop to Taylor More. 6 October 1860. HGS.
12. Jay Gould to James Oliver. 5 November 1860. HGS.
CHAPTER 11: A PARTICULAR FUTURE
1. New York Tribune. 17 October 1860.
2. Bouck White. The Book of Daniel Drew. New York: Doubleday. 1910. 160.
3. Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York to 1895. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999. 869.
4. Henry Clews. Fifty Years on Wall Street. 176.
5. Dun. New York City branch files, 201:420. David Murray’s Centennial History of Delaware County: 1797–1897 mistakenly identifies Jay Gould’s father-in-law as the David S. Miller who resided in the Catskill Mountains town of Greenville during the mid and late 1800s. This is incorrect.
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