The Olivers: the plow, the presidency, and Copshaholm

1823 – 1987

James Oliver (1823–1908): the inventor. Born on 28 August 1823 at Newcastleton, Scotland, Oliver came to America in 1835, and in May 1855 bought a quarter interest in a South Bend foundry. His chilled plow — its share hardened by the chilling process so it scoured clean in sticky prairie soil — took its foundational patent on 30 June 1857, and the South Bend Iron Works was incorporated on 22 July 1868. The great Chapin Street plant of 1876 made the Oliver name a fixture of the world's farmland. His labor record is part of him: in January 1885 the works met a strike of mostly Polish workers, the west side's first great labor confrontation, told in the Businesses section. James Oliver died in 1908, and the works — and this profile's second act — passed to his son. His company's deep record lives in the Businesses section.

Joseph Doty Oliver (1850–1933): the son, the marketer to his father's inventor, in the family historian's pairing. J. D. Oliver was born on 20 August 1850 at Mishawaka, while the family still lived there, and began work in his father's firm at fourteen, cutting threads on nuts for seventy-five cents a day — a job he told a Tribune reporter in 1913 he had dreaded. George Milburn hired him as a bookkeeper on 1 July 1867, and he rose through the firm he would lead: on his father's death in 1908 he became president of the Oliver Chilled Plow Works, and he carried it to the merger that created the Oliver Farm Equipment Company on 1 April 1929. On 10 December 1884 he married Anna Gertrude Wells of Johnstown, New York; they had four children. In 1895–96, on the block at Washington and Chapin he had bought in 1894, he built Copshaholm — 38 rooms, designed by the New York firm of Lamb & Rich, built of Indiana fieldstone cut on site by masons brought from Europe, named for his father's Scottish birthplace, and among the first houses in South Bend with electric light, powered from the plow works. He died at Copshaholm on 6 August 1933; Anna died in 1938.

The third generation, and the gift: James Oliver had built the Queen Anne house at 630 West Washington and given it to his daughter Josephine for one dollar; J. D.'s daughter Gertrude Oliver, who grew up at Copshaholm, later lived in that house after her aunt Josephine Oliver Ford's death. Gertrude married Charles Frederick Cunningham; when she died in 1987 at the age of 99, her children — Oliver, Jane and Ann Cunningham — donated both houses, Copshaholm and the Oliver Inn house, to the Northern Indiana Center for History. The family had occupied Copshaholm continuously from 1896 until Joseph D. Oliver Jr.'s death in 1972, and the house and its original family contents passed to the forerunner of today's History Museum in the 1970s. The mansion the plow built is now the city's museum of itself, which is the correct ending for the Olivers' People record: three generations, one works, one street, and the house given to the public.

Sources:

1. Businesses section of this history (banked) — James Oliver's birth and emigration, the May 1855 foundry purchase, the patent of 30 June 1857, the incorporation of 22 July 1868, the 1876 plant, the January 1885 strike, the 1908 succession, and the merger of 1 April 1929.
2. National Register of Historic Places registration form, Joseph D. Oliver House (Copshaholm), U.S. Department of the Interior — J. D. Oliver's birth on 20 August 1850 at Mishawaka, the marriage of 10 December 1884, the house built 1895–96 by Lamb & Rich, his death on 6 August 1933, Anna's in 1938, the occupation to 1972, and the donation of house and contents.
3. Indiana Historical Society, "Copshaholm" (Traces, Fall 2005) — the fourteen-year-old's seventy-five-cent day, the 1867 bookkeeping start, the presidency of 1908, the four children, and the father-inventor/son-marketer pairing.
4. Historic South Bend Homes (monon.org), drawing on the Northern Indiana Center for History — James Oliver's gift of the 630 West Washington house to Josephine for one dollar, Gertrude Cunningham's residence and death in 1987 at 99, and her children's donation of both houses.