John A. Gould violin, Boston 1922

John Alfred Gould was born in England in 1860 and moved to the United States to settle in Boston, where he initially worked for violin maker Orin Weeman. He opened his first shop at 147 Tremont Street, later naming the company John A. Gould & Sons after his sons joined the firm. This company would thrive until the late 1980s. Two of Gould's violins were used in acoustic experiments conducted by Harvard University Professor Frederick Saunders in 1938, comparing favorably with Jascha Heifetz's Guarneri del Gesù.