James
Oliver
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The
Origins of the Oliver family
When James
Oliver (pictured) was born to his parents, George Oliver, a
shepherd, and his wife, Elizabeth Irving, August 28, 1823,
in the tiny village of Newcastleton, Scotland, it may have
been hard to imagine that this child of humble beginnings
would become one of America’s most influential inventors
and industrialists. Or that James would one day have a son, Joseph
D. Oliver, who would become a business genius in his own
right and build a mansion in South Bend, Indiana (Copshaholm).
George Oliver
was born in 1770 on a farm known as Bleakboneynear in
Newcastleton or, as the village was called in ancient times,
Copshaholm. Most of Newcastleton’s residents were very
poor. George was a shepherd, as probably were his ancestors.
His wife came from an old and well-known Scottish family,
and as a young man, George worked for them.
In 1802,
George, 32, and Elizabeth, 21, married. Elizabeth’s family
did not approve of the marriage, feeling that George, a
shepherd, was well below the standing of the Irvings. As a
result, the families were estranged for a number of years.
George and
Elizabeth had nine children in 21 years. James, the last
child, was born when Elizabeth was 42. Six years later when
her brother was widowed, Elizabeth undertook raising his
four children who ranged in age from infancy to six years
old.
The Olivers,
extremely religious, were Presbyterians. James learned to
read and write in a church school. Cholera struck Scotland
in 1832, bringing business to a virtual halt. George and
Elizabeth were hard pressed to make ends meets. In addition,
George, who had been injured in 1833 while driving sheep to
England, was unable to walk without a cane.
In 1830, John
Oliver, one of their older sons, restless and penniless,
tied up all of his belongings in a red handkerchief and left
for America, working his passage as a seaman. He found work
at a dollar a day and wrote his family in Scotland in
glowing terms. John described his new home in America,
telling about a country where firewood was plentiful and in
fact, were sometimes in the way. He also wrote about eating
meat three times a week. (Actually he ate meat daily, but
was afraid his family wouldn’t believe that.) He also
explained that he ate at his employer’s table—unheard of
in Scotland. Lured by John’s letters, another of the
Olivers’ son, Andrew, and a daughter, Jane, immigrated in
1834.
All three
wrote letters to Scotland describing opportunities America
offered and sending money home to their parents. Impressed
by this, Elizabeth, then 54, began a campaign to move her
entire family to the new land. However, her husband George,
who was 65, was content with life as a shepherd. He was too
old to move, he declared, and too old to try to do anything
but tend sheep.
But George
eventually gave in.
John, Andrew
and Jane had sent back enough money to pay all the
family’s debts. The family sold their surplus belongings
at an auction. The old stone cottage was locked, the key
turned back to the landlord, and George and Elizabeth
Oliver, with four of their children, Dorothy, 20, Robert, 18
(and sick at the time), William, 14, and the youngest,
James, 12, began their journey to America. The oldest son,
George Jr., who was married and had a family, remained in
Scotland.
The family
left their village in March 1835, their few remaining
belongings piled on carts. Neighbors accompanied them the
first two miles on their journey to Annon, Scotland, a
waterfront town near the border of England. They covered 12
miles the first day and reached Annon the second day.
On the third
day, the Oliver family boarded a cattle boat for Liverpool.
The decks were so crowded with sheep and cattle that planks
were placed over the animals to form a crude bridge on which
passengers walked to get to their makeshift cabins. Although
the boat reached Liverpool the next morning, the seas were
too rough and the ship couldn’t reach the dock. Terrified
passengers were loaded into boats and rowed to shore. They
were to set sail from Liverpool the next day aboard the ship
"Halo" and spent a sleepless night at a public
house. The family worried that they wouldn’t be allowed to
board the ship because William was sick, but his illness was
overlooked and they sailed for America on April 3, 1835.
The trip to
New York took seven weeks and four days, with severe weather
causing a rough crossing of the Atlantic. For the first
three weeks most of the passengers, many of them seasick,
remained below deck. Two deaths occurred, one from the
dreaded smallpox virus, and the bodies were buried at sea.
James got in trouble by asking the captain to explain how
the dead people could ever be found on judgment day.
Elizabeth was forced to remain cabin-bound because of her
lame husband and sick son. James, however, ran the decks,
climbed the rigging, and mixed with the sailors.
One day,
while the ship was been tossed in rough seas, George
declared that there was no way they were going to see
America. James wasn’t worried, however. He explained that
the sailors on deck were swearing and surely wouldn’t risk
eternal damnation if death were actually near.
The ship
finally reached New York. The Olivers, accustomed to the
beauty of Scotland, thought New York looked unattractive.
They spent little time there, leaving soon by a steamboat on
the Hudson River to travel to Albany, New York. They noted
that the steamboat burned wood and stopped every few miles
for fuel.
While on the
boat, the Olivers ate oatmeal, brown bread and smoked bear
meat. At Albany, where a Native American sold them sassafras
for tea and dried blackberries, the family began a 17-mile
railroad trip northwest to Schenectady, New York. The
historic locomotive DeWitt Clinton was attached by a
leather hose to a railcar that held large piles of wood and
several barrels of water for making steam. Behind this
railcar were three first-class cars resembling stagecoaches
and four "emigrant" flatcars equipped with wooden
benches, on one of which that the Oliver family rode.
At
Schenectady the Olivers took a boat on the Erie Canal that
had been completed just a few years earlier. After a
three-day journey they changed boats at Montezuma, New York
and continued to Geneva, New York, to the farm of James
Goodwin, father-in-law of John Oliver, the first of the
Oliver sons to leave Scotland. The Olivers made the
seven-mile trip to John’s small log-framed farmhouse in
two days.
For the first
time ever, the Olivers had plenty to eat—meat at every
meal, potatoes, onions, and a food the Olivers had not seen
before: corn on the cob. James, thinking the corn on the ear
was a new way of cooking beans, cleaned off the cob and
asked that the "stick" be refilled.
The long
journey had taken its toll on the Olivers’ pool of money
and by this time, it was nearly all spent. With finances a
major concern, James began working as a chore boy at a
nearby farm for 50 cents a week and board. Using a neck
yoke, he carried lunch to field workers, chopped wood and
did other menial tasks for his employer. Because James was
ignorant of American farm life, he did could not hitch a
horse to a wagon, mistakenly pulled up corn by the roots
looking for the ears, and had never seen a cook stove and
had no idea how to use one. However, his employer liked his
energetic ways, and when James finally had to leave, his
boss offered to triple his wages if he’d return.
That autumn,
James moved with his family to Alloway, New York, a small
town settled by Scottish immigrants. Here they resided on a
farm until the next summer. Prompted by the desire to obtain
inexpensive land available in the Midwest, the Olivers moved
from Alloway to LaGrange County, Indiana in 1836. The trip,
by boat and wagon, took 21 days.
Meanwhile,
their daughter Jane, who had left Scotland in 1834, had
married Charles Roy, who owned 60 acres in Clear Spring
Township, LaGrange County. Son Andrew, who also left in
1834, had obtained 160 acres of virgin land from the
government. James and others in the family set about to help
him clear this land.
In that era,
Mishawaka was known as St. Joseph Iron Works because of what
appeared to be inexhaustible deposits of bog iron from which
castings could be made. In December 1836, several of the
Oliver children, including James, moved there, probably
prompted because of better opportunities available there.
The St. Joseph Iron Company, for which the town was named,
was attempting to build a dam across the St. Joseph River.
James worked there for $6 a month until the spring of 1837,
when a depression left the company without ready cash.
James
attended George Merrifield School for a brief time, quitting
to help support his mother after the death of his father on
September 6, 1837. Attempts to help his mother led to
numerous jobs and adventures. He cut and sold wood, did
menial chores, labored as a farm hand, and, at one time,
worked for Alexis Coquillard, a South Bend pioneer who was
attempting to dig a canal to link the Kankakee and St.
Joseph Rivers. Sleeping in a shanty while wolves howled
nearby proved too much for him. James became ill with a type
of malaria and quit.
Later, James
also worked as a pole man on a keelboat, hauling wheat on
the St. Joseph River to Lake Michigan. He liked the work but
when the captain was arrested for defaulting on debts, James
lost his job, wasn’t paid and walked the 15 miles from
Niles, Michigan, to his home in Mishawaka.
James and his
brother Andrew then found work in a small foundry owned by
the South Bend Blast Furnace Company of Mishawaka. There
James learned to scratch castings and cast molds, but the
company failed in 1840. In the following years he chopped
wood, dug ditches, and cared for 500 hogs that he fed
garbage from a gristmill owned by the Lee Brothers. Later he
worked in the gristmill, packing flour into wooden barrels
for $15 a month. The Lee brothers found him highly
industrious and asked him to take up the trade of a cooper
in the shop where the barrels were made. Here he gained
considerable knowledge as a carpenter.
James
and Early Married Life
Joseph
Doty, a direct descendant of the Mayflower pioneers, worked
with James. After the death of his wife, Joseph moved from
Berrien County, Michigan, to Mishawaka with his daughter,
Susan Catherine. James, 20, inclined to be bashful, became
enamored of Susan Catherine, 19. Although she rebuffed him
several times, he persevered and won her hand the following
year. James traveled by raft down the St. Joseph River to
South Bend where he obtained the wedding license, and James
and Susan Catherine were married May 30, 1844.
James and Susan began married life
in a slab cabin on the banks of the St. Joseph River near
Alger’s Island in Mishawaka. They purchased the cabin for
$18 and paid $7 annually for the land on which it stood.
While James improved the cabin (the best lumber cost $6 per
1,000 board feet), Susan wove rag carpets on a borrowed
loom. They lived in the cabin eight months, which James
later described as "the happiest days of our
lives," and then sold it for $50. The transaction,
which took them $450 in debt, brought them a house and
three-fourths of an acre of land on the north side of the
river.
Meanwhile, the gristmill was
destroyed by fire. James had to work for considerably less
than $15 a month until Spring 1845, when he went to work in
a blast furnace owned by William Gillen. There, James
learned the molder’s trade. In 1852, James and Susan sold
their house, purchasing a larger home along with ten acres
of orchard on the south side of the river. The site adjoined
the Lake Shore and Michigan South Railroad (later the New
York Central) that had been built a year earlier.
James
in His Later Life
James’ wife, Susan, had been in
poor health with a heart condition, and her death on
September 13, 1902, was a severe blow to him. They had been
married more than 58 years and now, except for servants and
a pet parrot he had given Susan, James was now alone in his
huge home.
"It seems I can see her form
in every part of the house," he wrote a friend. He had
a family mausoleum built in Riverview Cemetery and tried to
overcome his grief with work. James’ last remaining
sibling, William, had died in April 1902, and that added to
his overwhelming sorrow.
Business at the Oliver plant had
been excellent. Many departments, though working 12 hours a
day, were still unable to keep up with orders. This flood of
business was mostly attributed to the "No. 1 Oliver
High-Lift Gang Plow," a riding plow developed by the
Oliver father-and-son team. In 1901, South Bend Iron Works
became Oliver Chilled Plow Works. All stock remained with
the Oliver family who, deciding to diversify, acquired stock
in a number of companies. The largest project, however, was
construction of the hydroelectric plant on South Bend’s
West Race.
Old mills along the race were
razed, an old canal lock for ferries was dismantled, head
gates to an earlier dam were replaced, and wooden flumes
that had channeled water to old factories were torn out.
Thousands of loads of gravel were required for the project.
Despite his 81 years, James made daily trips in an open
buggy to and from the race to the gravel pit on his Sample
Street farm to keep track of things during the winter of
1903.
Water wheels of the Oliver Power
Plant were put into operation June 6, 1905. On June 14, the
Oliver Hotel was illuminated by electrical power running
through underground cables from the West Race. By July 2,
three-phase, 25-cycle current was running to the Oliver
factory on Sample Street. "I never did anything in my
life that I am as proud of as the work I did on the West
Race," James wrote in his diary. Building the plant,
which cost $266,376, had taken its toll of James Oliver. He
loved the West Race--where he had made his start--and was
determined that the hydroelectric plant would be built just
as he wanted.
However, most of his troubles
stemmed from the construction supervisor, Campbell, a tough,
whiskey-drinking roughneck, determined in his ways. James,
though no roughneck, was equally determined and used to
having his way. The two clashed daily. Once, Campbell
constructed a wall in the stream past the north end of the
powerhouse. James said the wall wasn’t necessary, that it
would hinder the flow of water. Campbell insisted it was
needed to protect the plant foundation. After a lengthy
argument, James took a crew of men out with drills, wedges,
picks, and crowbars, and began to destroy it. Campbell and
his crew came alongside in a boat. More violent arguments
ended with Oliver raising his hands and daring Campbell to
cut them off. It was a tense moment as the two crews of men,
armed with picks and crowbars, stood ready to back up their
determined leaders. Finally, Campbell backed off and the
wall came down.
Toward the end of the project
things changed. Campbell, whom James kept on the job as
supervisor despite their differences, said to James,
"Oliver, I changed my mind about you. I wrote a couple
of friends of mine a few days ago that I never found my
match until I found an OLD MAN by the name of Oliver that
was much concerned in the Oliver works. He is over 80 years
old and I declare he beats me in perseverance and
push."
May 5, 1905, marked the 50th
anniversary of James in the plow manufacturing business. He
had begun experiments for his chilled plow products in 1855.
June 12, 1906, he was granted a patent for his last
invention, an improved method of turning out a mold. In 49
years he had received almost as many patents, 45 in all.
At the start of 1907, James
continued to make almost daily trips to the rural gravel pit
to supervise the loading of sand for molding plow points. He
developed pneumonia in March, but rallied to the point of
being able to return to the factory in August. During autumn
he developed a shortness of breath and a heart condition. He
made his last visit to the factory January 17, 1908, and
died March 2, 1908, in his home at the age of 84.
After a private funeral service he
was laid to rest close by his wife in the new Oliver
mausoleum in Riverview Cemetery. Factories, stores,
theaters, banks and public offices were closed as a mark of
respect for him, while crowds of workers stood in the street
in a pouring rain to pay homage to him.
Although he gained great wealth,
James Oliver was basically a simple man. He neither drank to
excess nor smoked. He did not embrace religion in a
sectarian sense, but had great faith in a supreme
intelligence and believed the Golden Rule to be an
all-encompassing guide to living. He prized good health,
looked upon sickness with a touch of scorn, took a daily
cold bath and followed a calisthenics routine. He was
hard-driving, thrifty and obstinate. James lacked many
social graces and was not given to explanations, excuses or
apologies for dereliction to duty. He enjoyed farm work and
gave high priority to family, honesty, service to community
and loyalty to fellow workers.
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