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1855–1929 · SOUTH BEND (BOUNDARY) · FRACTIONS FROM THE FOUNDRY RECORD
The fractions are documentary. On 5 May 1855 James Oliver (born Newcastleton, Scotland, 28 August 1823; to Mishawaka with his family, then to South Bend in 1855) and his fellow molder Harvey Little each purchased a one-fourth interest in the little South Bend foundry of Ira Fox and Emsley Lamb — a quarter-share apiece, the foundry's other half in the sellers' hands. Six weeks later the St. Joseph River's flood devastated the plant; Oliver and Little survived it, reopened in November 1855, then purchased Lamb's half interest and renamed the firm the South Bend Iron Company. The descent runs in the county history's own words: on 22 July 1868 Oliver, with friends, incorporated the South Bend Iron Works — afterwards the Oliver Chilled Plow Works — its incorporators James Oliver, Thelus M. Bissell, George Milburn, John Brownfield and Clement Studebaker; "in time the stock of the corporation passed entirely into Mr. Oliver's hands, and those of his wife and children, James Oliver and his son, Joseph D. Oliver, becoming the sole active owners and managers" (Howard, 1907). Joseph D. Oliver is the heir who ran it — builder of Copshaholm (1896), the house that is now The History Museum's mansion — and the line runs from two quarter-shares in a flooded foundry to the largest plow factory in the world without ever leaving the family's hands. Osceola's own succession arithmetic is smaller and already banked, stated here at pointer size: the Bancroft mill passed brother-to-brother (1856) and then to an unnamed nephew (1880) — a descent with no shares printed in any fragment, as item 5 notes. DELTA disposition DF-9 touches the neighbouring covered row (item 2's first-mill accounts) and is noted here, per the run's rule, without re-opening it: the three accounts of the first mill stand unmerged in the banked set, and nothing in this article's Oliver fractions bears on them.
Sources: Oliver Chilled Plow Works history (the TTG / foundry record) — 5 May 1855, Oliver and Harvey Little each purchasing one-fourth interest; the flood; the November 1855 reopening; the purchase of Lamb's half. Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), vol. 1, the Oliver Plow Works section — the 1868 incorporators; the stock passing entirely to Oliver, his wife and children; Joseph D. Oliver sole active owner-manager with his father. Banked Businesses (the Bancroft descent).