Useful Daughter

When the late Jay Gould, maker and breaker of railroads, lay dying, his devoted daughter Helen, then 24, was a constant attendant at his bedside. Last week at Roxbury, N. Y., Jay Gould's birthplace, she died, after a stroke, an extraordinary daughter of an extraordinary father, of an extraordinary family.

The first U. S. Gould was Nathan Gold of England. A later Gould was Colonel Abraham, killed in a battle during the Revolution at Ridgefield, Conn. Jay Gould built a railroad empire and fought his battles in Wall Street. In many ways Helen took after her father. He left her $10,000,000 and made her (with three of his sons) a trustee of his $84,000,000 estate. She ran up her $10,000,000 to an estimated $30,000,000. She invested in traction properties and made an annual tour of 7,000 miles to inspect them. A strange sister for brothers whose financial transactions and marriages made sensational copy for Hearst's Sunday papers, six was so busy and so devoted to her father that she did not find time to make her debut till she was 25.

Helen Gould was not only interested in railroads, but a notable patron of the Railroad Y. M. C. A. One of the first beneficiaries of her charity was the U. S. Government, to which, in 1898, she gave $100,000 to help defray the expenses of "freeing" Cuba. She was also a pillar of the Red Cross, the D. A. R., the Dutch Reformed Church, and supported the American Tract Society in its efforts to reconvert Soviet Russia to Christianity.

Not till 1913, when she was 45, did she marry. On one of her country-wide business inspection tours she met Finley J. Shepard, who had long worked for the Gould railroads, was then assistant to the president of Missouri Pacific Railroad Co. By a provision of Jay Gould's will none of his children could marry without the consent of the trustees of his estate. She got the consent. She and her husband, who survives her, had no children, but they adopted a three-year-old waif, who was found on the steps of Manhattan's St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1914. Later they adopted two daughters of her brother Frank.

Three years after her marriage trouble came. Her father's estate had shrunk to some $50,000,000 and a suit was started for a review of its administration. Some 45 heirs filed cross suits. The case was in the courts for eleven years. Her brother, George J. Gould, whom the others accused of malfeasance, was finally removed as a trustee. In the end, although no wrong-doing was found against her, the trustees settled the case for $20,000,000. On the stand she testified: "I do not know how much money I gave away, but I think I gave away most of it." Day after the case was settled she resigned as a trustee. The settlement and her charities practically wiped out her capital but she still had the income of $13,000,000.

Last week at 70 the most useful of Jay Gould's unusual children died. Her admirers turned their eyes towards New York University's Hall of Fame. She endowed it.

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