Hon.. John Maxwell Gould is a native of Piermont, Grafton Co., N. H., was born Feb. 24, 1822 , and is the eldest son of Amos and Nancy Harris ( Bartlett ) Gould, natives of Massachusetts and New Hampshire respect­ ively, and of English extraction. The elder Mr. Gould was a tanner, shoe and harness maker, and taught his sons something of his various trades. During his youth, John M. attended the common schools through the winter months, and at the age of 18 his father sent him to Canaan (N. H.) Academy, and afterwards to an academy at Lyme, the same Stale.

From 1840 to 1843, he taught school at Canaan and Lyme, and in 1844 struck out for the West. His first halt was at Chicago , from which place he departed in disgust, after having idled about the muddy streets for nearly four weeks. We say " idled about the streets;" but when it is known that those four weeks constitute the sum of John M. Gould's freedom from active business during the whole of his life, it need not be added that those weeks of idleness were not such from choice. From Chicago he went to Grand de Tour, Ogle Co. ,Ill., where he landed with but a small sum of money about his person. Just how small a sum may be approximated when it is known that he left New England with $65 in money, and out of this sum had to pay his transportation and hotel fare through to the point of destination.

He had clerked some in a store before leaving Lyme, and when he secured a position in Dana & Troop's mercantile establishment at Grand de Tour, it was not altogether as an inexperienced man. At the end of a three-years' clerkship, he bought an interest in the concern by which he was employed, and the firm became J. M. Gould & Co. This partnership lasted a year, and Mr. Gould sold out. Mr. John Deere desired Mr. Gould to accompany him to Moline , insisting that he should take charge of his business here, and offering him a salary of $800 a year, in place of only $250 which he had been receiving. He accordingly, in 1848, came to Moline , and as a member of the firm of Deere, Tate & Gould, manufactured plows about four years. Retiring from the firm, he soon afterward formed a partnership with D. C. Dimock, in the manufacture of wooden-ware and furniture, the first wooden-ware ever manufactured west of Detroit , Mich. In 1856 their factory was burned out, after which they made no more furniture, but continued the wooden-ware, and in 1868 incorporated their concern as Dimock, Gould & Co., and added saw-milling and lumber business and the manufacture of paper pails. The capital stock of this company when incorporated was $150,00 but in 1884 it was increased to $300,000. Mr. Gould has been its president and managing director and vice-president since 1882.

In 1857 the firm of Gould, Dimock & Co. engaged in the banking business at Moline , and the concern bad an existence until it was merged into the First National. In December, 1863, the First National Bank of Moline was organized with Mr. Gould as cashier, a position he filled until January, 1867, at which time he was made the bank's president. Under his administration, first as cashier, and later as president,—an office he yet fills,—the progress of the bank has been in the highest degree creditable to himself and correspondingly satisfactory to the stockholders.

Mr. Gould was one of the organizers of the St. Louis, Rock Island & Chicago Railway Company, and became its treasurer in 1876, a position he filled, in addition to his many other important offices, until the road passed into the hands of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway Company.

Away back in 1853 he was elected on the Democratic ticket to the Judgeship of Rock Island County, and held the office four years. In 1861 he left the Democratic party and has since been an ardent Republican. Upon the question of the liquor traffic, he announces himself as a temperance man, but opposed to prohibition. President Buchanan appointed him Postmaster at Moline in 1857, and Mr. Lincoln appointed his successor in 1861. Since 1870 he has been continuously the president of the Lumbermen's Board of Trade for the four cities, Davenport, Moline, Rock Island and Muscatine, and president of the Moline Board of Trade since May, 1882. Before the organization of the city he was many years Town Trustee, twice Treasurer of the village, and has been Treasurer of the township funds continuously since 1864. He is president of the Citizens' League of Moline, and a member of the Board of Public Charities and a director in the St. Luke College Hospital, being appointed to the latter position by Gov. Cullom in 1877.

Such is but a brief outline of the business and official life of Judge Gould. Not a tithe of his history will ever be written; the trials and struggles of his early manhood are but glanced at, and the reader sees only the bright epochs of his successes. But we must not forget that like many another,in fact like very nearly every other man of our time that amounts to much, he began life as a poor boy. Before him was the world, not so hard to combat as the world at present, perhaps, but nevertheless there were struggles before him, and defeats in store for him. But with a brave heart and strong arm, he pressed steadily forward, and the brief review here printed tells the results. Judge Gould is a well preserved man for his age, and does daily as much work as any man in Moline, young or old. Instinctively a gentleman, he places every one around him at his ease; and his comfortable residence, presided over by his estimable wife, is a bright oasis where hundreds annually partake of his good cheer.

Aug. 13, 1848, Mr. Gould was united in marriage, at Grand de Tour,Ill., to Miss Alice Chase Moulton, grand-niece of the late Hon. Salmon P. Chase, and a native of Vermont. Mrs. Gould lived but a short time following her marriage, dying of consumption. Nov. 13, 1850, Judge Gould and Miss Hannah Marcy Dimock were married at Moline, and of their children, we make the following brief mention: Alice May, born May 20, 1851, and died Aug 29, 1851; Frank Wayland, an educated young gentleman, in the employ of Dimock. Gould & Co. as salesman; Frederick George, shipping clerk for the same firm; Grace Eliza (Mrs. Sullivan M. Hill); and John, born Aug. 18, 1858, and died Feb. 7, 1859.

Of no more worthy or representative business man of Rock Island County could the publishers of this work give a portrait than of Mr. Gould, as the foregoing sketch justifies us in such a statement.

 

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