George Jay Gould I

Encyclopedia : G : GE : GEO : George Jay Gould I

George Jay Gould I (February 6 1864 – May 16 1923) was a financier and the son of Jay Gould. He was himself a railroad executive, leading both the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad and the Western Pacific Railroad.

Contents

1 Railroad management
2 Birth, marriage and children
3 Death and burial
4 Legacy
5 Timeline
6 See also
7 External links
8 References

Railroad management

While in charge of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad (DRGW) at the turn of the 20th century, he sent DRGW surveyors and engineers through California's Feather River canyon to stake out a route for the DRGW to reach San Francisco, California. Through legal wranglings led by E. H. Harriman, who at the time led both the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads, Gould was forced to set up third-party companies to manage the surveying and construction to disguise his role. The route that Gould's engineers built became the Western Pacific Railroad's (WP) mainline.

In later years, the DRGW and WP would work together on trains that were passed off to each other in Salt Lake City, Utah, including the prestigious passenger train, the California Zephyr.

Birth, marriage and children

George was the son of Jay Gould (1836-1892) and Helen Day Miller (1838-1889). Upon his father's death George inherited the Gould fortune and his father's railroad holdings.

He married Edith M. Kingdon (1864-1921), a stage actress, and had the following children:

Helen Vivien Gould (c1885-1931) who married John Graham Hope DeLaPoer Horsley Beresford (1866-1945)
Kingdon Gould (1887-1945) who married Annunziata Camilla Maria Lucci (1890-1961)
George Jay Gould II (1888-1935) who was a tennis player
Marjorie Gould (1891-1955) who married Anthony Joseph Drexel II
Gloria Gould (1895-1943) who married Henry A. Bishop II and after a divorce married Walter McFarlane Barker
Edith Kingdon Gould (1900-1937) who married Carroll Livingston Wainwright I (1899-1967) and after a divorce married Sir Hector Murray MacNeal

George Gould also had a mistress, Guinevere Jeanne Sinclair, and had the following children with her:

Jane Sinclair Gould
George Sinclair Gould

These children were given the Gould name at the death of Edith Kingdon Gould in 1921.

Time magazine wrote on March 23, 1925: "Of the seven older children by his first marriage — Kingdon, Jay, George Jay Jr., Marjorie, Vivien, Edith, Gloria — three eloped, one married an English nobleman, and one the daughter of an Hawaiian princess."

Death and burial

He died of pneumonia on May 16, 1923, on the French Riviera after contracting a fever in Egypt after visiting the tomb of Tutankhamen. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in New York.

Legacy

Gould's estate in Lakewood, New Jersey is now the site of Georgian Court University.

Timeline

1864 Birth of George Jay Gould on February 6th
[1880 US Census] with George Jay Gould in Greenburgh, New York
1884 (circa) marriage to Edith M. Kingdon
[1900 US Census with George Jay Gould] in Lakehurst, New Jersey
1921 Death of Edith M. Kingdon, his wife
1923 Death of George Jay Gould, in the French Riviera on May 16th

External links

References

Brehm, Frank (2005), [The SF&GSL]. Retrieved March 2 2005.
Geis, Sister M. Christina, [The George Jay Gould Estate]. Retrieved March 2 2005.
White, John H., Jr. (Spring 1986), America's Most Noteworthy Railroaders, Railroad History, 154', p. 9-15.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.