The Oliver Brothers

Of the many omissions by Daniel Oliver’s earlier biographies was the presence in Spokane of his brother John W. Oliver. We don’t know exactly when John arrived in Spokane, but it was around the time of Daniel’s arrival, and he appears in the census of 1880 in Spokane, living with Daniel and Amanda. According to a December 7, 1881 story in the Valley Spirit newspaper in Chambersburg, PA,  John is reported as having lived the past five years in Washington Territory so he may have been in Washington as early as 1876 though perhaps not actually in Spokane. We have found records of one John W. Oliver purchasing options on land in central Washington Territory as early as 1878 and as late as 1890 though we don’t have firm proof that it was Daniel’s brother.

From the time of his arrival John and Daniel worked together on many projects and were often identified in newspaper stories in the 1880s and 1890s as the Oliver Bros. Their main project and source of wealth was The Oliver Planing Mill which began as the Wiscombe, and Johnson Planing Mill in 1883. Daniel bought a part interest in the mill in 1884 and Wiscombe withdrew from the firm. It was Oliver and Johnson Planing Mill for a time, but when he sold it in 1889 it was owned outright by the Olivers. The story of this mill is told on another page in this website titled The Oliver Planing Mill.

John as a Partner

Not only did John work with Daniel on many projects, he appears to have been a full partner in the business which was widely known in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene as the Oliver Brothers who were prominent building contractors and lumber suppliers. In an 1888 Weekly Review article John is reported as having attended a meeting of “lumber dealers and mill men” who were forming a protective union to regulate the prices of rough and finished lumber. He also seems to have shared his brother’s interest in politics as it was reported in the newspaper in 1886 that he was a delegate to the Democratic party county convention.

By 1885 John, still a Batchelor, was well known as a man of property and some wealth. A newspaper article on January 17, 1885, recounted the theft of a $50 bill from John. “Mr. Oliver, with a carelessness only born of the arrogance of wealth, left the ($50) bill in the pocket of a vest hanging in his sleeping apartment….” According to the story even though John and others interrogated a number of Chinese laundry employees they suspected, he didn’t get the bill back .

John the Sharpshooter

John was also known for his ability with firearms. In 1887 and 1888 a series of newspaper stories related his achievements in a series of sharp-shooting contests in Spokane. In February of 1887 a shooting contest was held in which both John and Daniel were contestants, though John was a better shot than Daniel. In December of 1887 John was a member of two teams shooting for a silver cup as the award for winning the “grand shooting match” to be held by the Spokane Rifle club on December 24th. The papers reported on December 27th that John Oliver had come in third in the general contest. In November of 1888 the Spokane Club shooting team beat the Fort Sherman team in a series of matches firing rifles at 200 years off-hand and 300 yards with a rest (support for the rifle). John was not the winner, but made a fine showing with a score of 80 in the “all-comers’ category. A story in August of 1888 relates that “groups of hunters from Spokane are going out after the large populations of prairie chickens.” Among the parties hunting was John Oliver, “an expert with a gun.”

Oliver Bros. Building Contractors

Other biographies, mostly simply copying facts from his obituary or standard biographies from volumes of local Spokane history, state that Daniel was a carpenter, but it appears that, with his brother, he was actually a substantial building contractor and sometime developer with many large projects to his credit.

For instance, in 1885 the small city of Coeur d’Alene contracted to have its power plant location moved by the Oliver Brothers. The City’s power was out for two days while the move was completed. The project would indicate that the brothers were more than mere carpenters, but were conversant with other technologies as well in order to disconnect and move the cities dynamos.

In 1886 the Oliver Brothers evidently took a loss when a two story dwelling they were building for C. H. Kingman, burned to the ground, leaving them holding the bag (they had no insurance on the project). The fire had been started by what was then referred to as “an incendiary,” meaning an arsonist. The loss, according to the newspaper story amounted to a few hundred dollars.

In August 1887 the Oliver Bros. won the bid to build a new school house in Spokane which consisted of two buildings, one on each side of the river. Price of the project was $5,600. The buildings were to be of brick and the project had to be completed within fifty days. I believe that one of the schools, known as the Central School building, was located at the present site of Lewis and Clark High School.

In 1889, after the great fire, John and Daniel completed a house at 403 E. Washington Street that was the family home for Daniel and Amanda for the rest of their lives. After Daniel died in 1906 Amanda continued living in the house until her death in 1941.

In 1890 a newspaper announcement records that John W. Oliver was granted a building permit to erect a two-story brick building, with basement, 30 by 70 feet, on the north side of Riverside avenue, between Bernard and Washington streets (209 E. Riverside by the old numbering system). This was the location in 1892 of The Oliver Block, owned by D.K. Oliver and Amanda which was located at 334-336 W. Riverside (by the new numbering system as of 1891). It was one of their most important projects in terms of the wealth of Daniel and Amanda for the remainder of their years. It was a 30 by 90 two story brick building near the corner of Riverside and Washington that brought income from several businesses occupying the main and second floors as well as income from the rental of the Oliver Hall on the second floor. This building was known as The Oliver Block in the peculiar way that Spokane had of calling commercial buildings of any size “blocks.” The site had been used by the brothers for years before the erection of this building and had other buildings at the location at earlier times. For some period of time John W. Oliver resided in one of the buildings before the two-story Oliver Block was built. More is told about the use of the Oliver Block and its place in the history of Spokane on the page The Oliver Block in this website.

In 1898 the Oliver Bros. won the bid to build a bridge over the Spokane River near Fort Sherman in Coeur d’Alene. This was a considerable project involving the driving of pilings into the river bed and constructing the framework of the bridge strongly enough to carry the passengers and freight for local traffic. The project budget allowed $2 a day for unskilled labor, $3 a day for skilled labor, $9 per thousand feet of lumber and $1.25 for each piling. Bid for the contract was $2475, $1000 to be paid by the county and the remainder to be paid by citizens through cash subscriptions, labor and materials. In October of 1899 the city of Coeurd’Alene through its bridge committee was still making payments on the bridge including $243 that month for the Oliver Bros.

As anyone familiar with contracting and development work will know it is difficult to do much in the field without the inevitable law suit. Newspaper stories over the twenty years that the Oliver Brothers bought land and built buildings for themselves and others there was a solid record of their industry. The brothers were sued individually and together a dozen or so times and some of the cases persisted in the courts for several years. From this distance and with the  scanty information given by newspaper accounts it is difficult to assess the merit of the various cases, but my conclusion is not that they were unreliable so much as the participants in a type of work in which the various parties often have differing opinions as to the deal they signed and the satisfactory completion of work that was contracted. Most of the cases were torts for the recovery of payment for work done as a contractor or subcontractor. In one case the Oliver Brothers had mechanics lien against the Albion hotel, trying to get money for work done but not paid for. Of course there were other types of suits as well and in 1890 John Oliver was in court suing Marrian and Pittman for damages sustained from a vicious horse (the property of the defendants).

During the course of their partnership it would appear that Daniel was the senior partner and more committed to the growing city of Spokane. In 1893 John left Spokane for two years to return to his home town in Pennsylvania. We have no information on what he did there in this time, but he returned to Spokane in March of 1895 “to make Spokane his home” according to an article in the Spokesman-Review.

We haven’t learned when John Oliver died or where he had been living at that time. Our last word on his whereabouts was in 1907 when his brother George died and he was reported as surviving him. In 1904, after his brother Philip died, he was reported as living in Beaver Ridge, Tennessee.