OLIVER'S CAMP HOUSEOliver's Camp House being demolished
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Oliver's Camp will feature folk-life exhibits and events which focus on the area's citrus, agriculture, and commercial fishing heritage. |
Setting on finished foundation June 20, 2008 |
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Oliver's Camp House
Also known as the Grove House
June 2005
On this site was located the "main camp" of the Oliver family who migrated from Missouri in the early 1870's. They homesteaded this area of Turnbull Hammock and owned large tracts of timberland and citrus groves. In 1886, L.C. Oliver started a lumber business in Titusville, and dealt in Georgia pine lumber, shingles, and other building supplies. Oliver bought half interest in the Budge & Huckabay Hardware Store in 1888, and renamed the business Oliver & Budge Hardware & Lumber.Budge and Oliver moved to booming Miami in 1895, and started another hardware and lumber business. Budge bought Oliver's half interest in the Titusville business, and in 1898 sold it to his father-in-law, Captain J. Pritchard, and it became James Pritchard and Son Hardware.
Oliver and wife Louise sold their Turnbull Hammock forty acres to J.J. Parrish and wife Emma in June 1918 for $15,000. J.J. Parrish was a Florida Senator and one of the state's largest citrus grove owners and businessmen during the early 1900's. Located on this property was a 1910 Craftsman style 2-story house that Parrish used as the grove caretaker's residence.
Lewis Cass Oliver Biography.
Though born near Little Rock, Arkansas, he was only a child when his parents removed to Georgia and established their home at Reidsville where he was reared and educated. Coming to Florida in 1887, Mr. Oliver first located at Titusville, where he engaged in the lumber business.It was early in 1896, before regular train service was established over the Florida East Coat Railway, that he arrived in Miami. When trains began running to the city in the summer of that year, he received a consignment of several carloads of lumber on the first freight train, and as a lumber dealer supplied materials for the first structures in the new town. He himself built the first residence here using it for his own home. The house was located where the Urmey Hotel now stands in the heart of the business district. Another example of his progressive spirit was the he brought the first automobiles to Miami. He also built the first ice plant in the city, and in the other ways influenced the early development of the locality.
After selling his lumber business and ice plant at Miami, Mr. Oliver removed to Jacksonville. His home was in that city for fourteen years. While there he conducted the Ford Car General Agency for Jacksonville in nineteen counties. During the last two years he was in this business at Jacksonville, he sold nearly 1,700 Ford automobiles.
From Jacksonville in 1916 Mr. Oliver took his family to live on an orange grove on the Indian River near Titusville, but in 1921 returned to Miami and he now regards his interests as permanently centered here. At Miami. since returning, he has built and is operating the Oliver Ice Company. This plant has a manufacturing capacity of 225 tons a day, and has an equipment of thoroughly modern manufacturing machinery and facilities for the expeditious handling and distribution. He does both a local and shipping business, supplies the ice for the refrigerator cars of the Florida East Coast Railway and also for yachts and ships of various character making the port of Miami.
Mr. Oliver first married Miss Mary Gray, now deceased. His oldest child Mrs. Julia Bertha Arnold is the daughter of Mary Gray Oliver. By his second marriage at Jacksonville, Mr. Oliver had three children, Clara Ford Oliver, Louis Riley Oliver and Sidney Oliver.
copied from History of Florida, Past and Present 1923 Vol 2 page 161
Additional comments:
L.C. Oliver (Lewis Cass Oliver) moved to Walker Co GA shortly after this article went to print. He lived in GA but he owned a diary farm just across the line in Tennessee. During the stock market crash, he lost his fortune and moved back to Duval Co. FL. There was also one last child born to Lewis while living in Miami. His name was James Ogilvie Oliver. Lewis's second wife and mother of the four children mentioned above was Louise Alcoa Boothe of Callahan, Nassau Co., FL. daughter of John Riley Boothe and Alice Amanda Ogilvie.