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Jay Gould - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
trading (which were then legal but frowned upon) to build capital and to execute or prevent hostile
takeover attempts. As a result, many contemporary businessmen did not trust Gould and often expressed
contempt for his approach to business. Even so, John D. Rockefeller named him as the most skilled
businessman he ever encountered.
The New York City press published many rumors about Gould that biographers passed on as fact. For
example, they alleged that Gould's dealings in the tanning business drove his partner Charles Leupp to
suicide. In fact, Leupp had episodes of mania and depression that psychiatrists would now recognize as
indications of bipolar disorder, and his family knew that this, not his business dealings, caused his death.
These biographers portrayed Gould as a parasite who extracted money from businesses and took no
interest in improving them. Anti-semitism, in connection with Gould's name, motivated some of this
hostility, even though he was born a Presbyterian and married an Episcopalian.
More recent biographers, including Maury Klein and Edward Renehan, have reexamined Gould's career
with more attention to primary sources. They have concluded that fiction often overwhelmed fact in
previous accounts, and that despite his methods, Gould's objectives were usually constructive.
At the time of his death, Gould was a benefactor in the reconstruction of the Reformed Church of
Roxbury, now the Jay Gould Memorial Reformed Church.[1]
Timeline
● 1836 Birth of Jay Gould as Jason Gould
● 1841 Death of Mary Moore Gould, mother
● 1850 US Census with Jay Gould in Roxbury, New York
● 1856 Publication of History of Delaware County
● 1863 Marriage to Helen Day Miller (1838-1889)
● 1864 Birth of George Jay Gould I, his son
● 1866 Death of John Burr Gould, his father
● 1866 Birth of Edwin Gould, his son
● 1868 Birth of Helen Gould, his daughter
● 1869 Black Friday
● 1870 US Census in first Manhattan home
● 1870 US Census in second Manhattan home
● 1871 Birth of Howard Gould, his son
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