Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/27

 He was born on May 27, 1836, in the little post-*village of Roxbury, Delaware county, New York state. Nearly half a century before, while Delaware, Ulster and Otsego counties were yet one, his grandfather came with half a dozen Puritan families from Fairfield county, Connecticut, and took up land near the land which became Jay Gould's birth-*place. This grandfather was Captain Abram Gould. He had been a Revolutionary soldier and was described as a "grim, earnest, honest man." To him was born in 1792, a son who was named John B. Gould, the first male child born in the new settlement. John B. grew to manhood, was three times married, and Jay was his son by his first wife. The boy's mother was a pious woman, a regular attendant of the Methodist services held in the "yaller meetin' house," where Jay also imbibed such religious notions as found a foothold in a nature not much given to the contemplation of spiritual things. The father was a small farmer and kept a dairy of twenty cows.

Until he was fourteen years old Jay lived on the farm, picking up such a meager education as attendance from four to five years at a district school, which was closed during the greater part of the year, afforded. This school was finally closed altogether by the breaking out of the "Anti-rent War," as it was called, an uprising of the farmers against the efforts of persons who claimed to have bought the land from the Indians to collect an annual rental. Jay was dissatisfied with farm life, which indeed offered nothing, under the circumstances, to satisfy