Union Depot Grounds Signed by both Jay and George Gould - 1882 Autographed Stock Certificate

This Very Rare railway stock of the Union Depot Grounds is issued to Jay Gould and nicely signed at back. His signature is witnessed by his son George J. Gould. (The signatures are more attractive than our illustration indicates. Scanning did not pick them up very well).

Jay Gould (1836-1892), Financier. As a youth, learned rudiments of surveying and showed precocious skill in money-making. Keenwitted and unscrupulous, he began speculating in railroads after 1860. His operations became spectacular when in 1867 with James Fisk he became a director of the Erie Railroad. This led to his struggle against Cornelius Vanderbilt for control. His victory and later various other involvement with the Union Pacific, Kansas Pacific, Denver Pacific, Central Pacific, Missouri, Kansas, and Texas made him a legend in Railroad finance. His son George Jay Gould inherited vast railway interests but lost these, one by one, to opposition financiers led by Kuhn, Loeb & Co., and Edward H. Harriman. 

George Jay Gould (1864-1923) George Jay Gould I 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. Upon his father's death George inherited the Gould fortune and his father's railroad holdings. 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. 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. His estate was valued at $15,054,627 but after debts were paid it was worth $5,175,590 in 1933 dollars.