his employer looked at the transaction in the light of a breach of confidence. The result was that it caused a separation between the merchant and his clerk, and broke up a little romance which is said to have existed between the young speculator and a young female member of his employer's family.
This was practically the end of his life and associations with the little villages, Roxbury and Hobart, though his map work and surveying, in the following years, were largely done in the surrounding counties. As a matter of fact, he had exhausted the possibilities for him in those country villages. He had squeezed what knowledge and profits were to be obtained there, and was ready to seek new worlds to conquer. While the little towns furnished him no inducements for permanent residence, and but little of the start toward his colossal fortune, nevertheless, the influences that the towns and their people exerted on his early life must be credited with much of the better business qualities, of perseverance and method that gave much of his success in later years.
Gould's mother died in 1841, when he was but five years old. His father died in 1866, and some years ago their distinguished son erected over their graves a handsome monument in the village cemetery. The elder Gould had a farm of about one hundred and fifty acres, and was esteemed by his neighbors as a worthy citizen. The house in which Jay was born and spent his boyhood is described as a "two-story, box-like frame building covered with a
