James Oliver’s Mishawaka Roots
by Travis Childs, Director of School Programs

After James Oliver and his family arrived in America, they eventually settled in LaGrange County, Indiana, with the intention of clearing land and spending the rest of their lives farming. Word had reached the Olivers in LaGrange County that Mishawaka was preparing to build a dam and many paying jobs were available. Therefore, in December of 1836, James, his mother and father and most of the family left LaGrange County to settle on the St. Joseph River in a small village that would later become Mishawaka.

James was 13 years old when he went to work for Philo Hurd, the father of the credited founder of Mishawaka, Alanson Hurd. He labored for Mr. Hurd all through the winter and left his employ the following spring. While working for Mr. Hurd, James also cut wood for one family and did chores for two others.

During 1837, James stayed home and attended school with George Merrifield being his teacher. In September, however, he had to leave school because of the death of his father. James was now expected to help provide for his mother and siblings, and he immediately started working on several farms owned by the Hurd family. Unfortunately, the Hurd farms went bankrupt and all James had to show for his work was a cheap fustian suit of clothes (fustian is a cheap woolen blend of material that sometimes includes wooven flax). Once again, James was without employment, but his brother Andrew helped him secure a new job.

South Bend’s Alexis Coquillard had invested a huge sum of money in digging another waterway race that would connect the Kankakee River to the St. Joseph River and was going to be named the Kankakee Race. James worked with his brother who had been sub-contracted by Coquillard to do the digging. James worked part of two days, got sick and had to quit. The last night his spent sleeping in a small shack next to the newly dug race while wolves howled outside which scared James badly. The project not only went bad for James, but his brother lost money when the Kankakee Race project failed.

Always being the resourceful Scottish lad, James was not without work for long. He was hired to be a pike-poleman on a large keelboat. Numerous boats carried goods and supplies up and down the St. Joseph River, and James boarded one of these vessels in Mishawaka. His job was to assist in pushing the boat by way of a long pole that was first stuck into the river bottom to propel the boat forward. James quickly got the hang of it after falling into the river a couple of times. On his first (and only) trip, the boat landed on the outskirts of St. Joseph, Michigan. After off-loading the cargo, the boat headed back to Mishawaka, but only got as far as Niles, where the captain was arrested and the crew was dismissed without pay. James had to walk the rest of the way home.

James continued to move from one odd job to the next eventually finding himself working in a gristmill packing flour. He eventually was persuaded by his boss to learn the cooper’s trade (making wooden barrels that held the ground flour). Before he had been in the cooper’s shop six months, he was turning out 10 flour barrels in less than 24 hours.

Around this time, James became smitten with the attractive daughter of Joseph Doty, a carpenter and a past co-worker of James. Susan Catherine Doty rebuffed James’ advances at first but they eventually became good friends. In the course of a year, she accepted his marriage proposal, and they became engaged. James was 21 and Susan was 19. They were married on May 30, 1844, after James had walked all the way to South Bend to obtain the marriage license. This marriage would last, through thick and thin, for 58 years. James and Susan lived in a very modest shanty in Mishawaka, but eventually moved to a slightly larger home were Josephine Oliver, their first child, was born on April 6, 1846. Four years later, their son, Joseph Doty Oliver, was born on August 2, 1850.

In 1844 William Gillen, who was the owner of a foundry in Mishawaka, hired James to train him in the iron-molding trade. Three years later James was working for the St. Joseph Iron Company in Mishawaka after Gillen’s company folded. In 1852, James and Susan bought their third home with over 5-acres of land. They would occupy this Mishawaka home until they moved to South Bend in 1857.