WHO WAS James Oliver?
James Oliver was the youngest of the nine children of Scottish sheep farmers George and Elizabeth (Irving) Oliver. Times were hard in early 19th century Scotland, owing partly to an outbreak of cholera that killed most of the family’s sheep. The frugal Oliver family managed to hang on despite desperate conditions, but George and Mary’s oldest son, John, left for America in 1830. The next two oldest siblings, Andrew and Jane, also found opportunities limited and left for America. Meanwhile James, then 7 years old, was learning to read and write in a local Presbyterian church.
John Oliver found work in Geneva, New York. Andrew and Jane joined him there and soon all were mailing home glowing accounts of a land where forests were actually in the way and people ate meat three times a week, at a time when the family in Scotland was barely eking out an existence. George Oliver was not the adventuresome type and resisted the idea of emigrating, but Mary took charge and announced that the family was going to New York. The year was 1834; Jamie, as he was called, was 11.
The family landed in Castle Garden, New York, after crossing the Atlantic in a
