After graduating from Columbia Law School, he went to Oil City, Pennsylvania, in February 1918 to work for the Galena Signal Oil Company.[7] He later returned to New York City and began working at Liggett, Drexel & Co., the brokerage firm of his brother-in-law, Anthony Joseph Drexel III.[8][9]
For many years, Gould lived in Camden, Maine. He also maintained an apartment in Paris, a château in Mons, France (he owned the Petit Manoir in Maxilly-sur-Léman from 1930 to 1952) and a villa in San Remo, Italy.[7]
On July 5, 1917, a few days after his brother Kingdon married, Gould was married to Laura Marguerite Carter of Ardena, New Jersey,[10] to the disapproval of his parents.[11] She was the niece of Maughan Carter.[12] Before their divorce in Nice, France in 1923, they were the parents of two sons:[8]
George Jay Gould III (1918–1985), who married Eileen O'Malley (1919–1996), the daughter of Leonard O'Malley,[13] in 1942.[14][15]
Maughan Carter Gould (1920–1986), who married Suzanne Florence "Sukie" Close (1920–1989) in 1940.[16]
After their divorce, Laura married, and later divorced, English actor Roy Royston.[17] In 1927, he married Marie Louise Jacqueline Vial (1896–1969) of Paris who had been born in Claveisolles in the Rhônedepartment in eastern France.[18] Together, they were the parents of two sons:
Howard Jay Gould (1928–1998), who married in December 1951.
Patrick Jay Gould (1934–2018), an ornithologist who received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.[19]
Gould died on June 7, 1963, in Paris following an operation.[7] His widow died in 1969.
^"The Goulds Are Going". Time. March 23, 1925. Archived from the original on December 2, 2008. Retrieved August 21, 2007. 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 a Hawaiian princess.