Plowmaker to the World

Enlarge Image Image Gallery A vintage photo of an Oliver No. 11 sulky plow doing good work plowing down high weeds. The No. 11 sulky plow remained in the Oliver line-up from about 1910 into the 1940s.

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Most Farm Collector readers have heard of Oliver farm equipment and many will agree Oliver plows were among the best on the market during the last half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries.

Not too many, however, know much about James Oliver, the Scotsman who started the Oliver Chilled Plow Works.

James Oliver was born Aug. 28, 1823, in Roxburyshire, Scotland, the youngest of eight (two girls and six boys). His father was a shepherd on a big estate and was dirt poor. In 1830, James’ oldest brother immigrated to America, where he got a job paying $1 a day, a sum unheard of back in Scotland. Soon the next two Olivers, a boy and a girl, followed their brother to America and also found gainful employment.

The elder Oliver was content to be nothing more than a lowly shepherd, but Mrs. Oliver insisted the rest of the family make the journey to America. The oldest three children sent money to pay off debts for the trip and in 1834 the rest of the family boarded a sailing ship for America.

After a rough passage in which everyone was seasick, the ship’s passengers reached New York. The Oliver family went up the Hudson to Albany on a steamboat, rode the railroad to Schenectady and took the Erie Canal to Geneva, where their brothers and sister awaited them.

A story is told of James, who was unfamiliar with American food. There was no Indian corn (or maize) in Scotland, where wheat was then called “corn.” The first time young James was served corn on the cob, he thought it was a new way of cooking beans. After cleaning the “beans” off the cob, he asked to have it refilled.

All the Oliver kids went to work. Even 12-year-old James got a job helping a local farmer for 50 cents a week plus board. Two years later, word came to Geneva that in Indiana, the government was giving farms to anyone who would clear and settle the land. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, so the entire Oliver family, along with many others, set out for the “Far West.”

They ended up in Mishawaka, Ind., where James went to school for one winter, his only formal schooling. The next autumn, after pining away for his native Scotland, the elder Oliver died and James had to quit school and go to work. He worked for farmers and as a pole man on a riverboat before getting a job in an iron foundry, where he learned to smelt and mold iron.

Young Oliver met a girl named Susan Doty who helped him learn to read and eventually they fell in love. The Doty family didn’t think James was much of a catch, but when he bought (for $18) a small but comfortable 2-room slab house with a pounded blue-clay floor, they relented and approved the marriage.

Susan and James were married in May 1844. He continued working at various jobs such as iron molding, coopering and farming. He bought a quarter section of land and built a bigger house to hold the children he and Susan had: Joseph (who was called J.D.) and Josephine.

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