Robber_Barons_And_Good_Capitalists

Robber Barons And Good Capitalists James Jay Gould was born at Roxbury, N.Y., the son of John Burr and Mary (Moore) Gould, who owned a poor hill farm. On his father's side he was descended from Nathan Gold, of Bury St. Edmunds, England, who moved to Milford, Connecticut, in 1647 and some three years later settled in Fairfield, Conn. On his mother's side he was of Scottish descent. By determined effort, working for a blacksmith and later as clerk in a country store, he obtained some education in an academy and learned the basics of surveying. With this equipment he showed an abundant knack in money-making. Between his eighteenth and twenty-first years he helped prepare maps of Ulster, Albany and Delaware counties in New York, Lake and Geauga counties in Ohio, and Oakland County in Michigan, and in 1856 he published a volume of local history, History of Delaware County, and Border Wars of New York. At twenty-one, an undersized, keen-witted, unscrupulous young man, he had saved $ 5,000. With Zadock Pratt, a New York politician, he opened a large tannery in northern Pennsylvania, and shortly prevailed upon a New york leather merchant, C.M.Leupp, to assist him in obtaining full control of it. His business pacific, gould, new, erie, control, york, union, man, kansas, stock, james, railroad, owned, operations, missouri, later, jay, followed, fisk, drew, city, central, became, young, years, year, working, very, vanderbilt, upon, unscrupulous, tweed, tannery, system, succeeded