Santa Barbara County Biographies

L. G. OLIVER

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


L. G. OLIVER, who owns and cultivates a beautiful farm on the mesa, over- 
looking the sea, was born in Clermont County, Ohio, in 1826. His father was a 
farmer, and in 1841 moved to Des Moines County, Iowa, and there continued farming. 
The subject of this sketch worked at home until twenty-one years of age; then, in 1850, 
he bought the farm of 160 acres of his father, and continued in general farming until 1854, 
when he sold out and erected a steam saw and grist mill at Kossuth, Iowa, which lie 
operated for two years; then sold out and returned to farm life, purchasing eighty acres 
on Round Prairie. In the Pike's Peak excitement he fitted out an expedition for the 
mines, driving five yoke of oxen and taking four persons. After traveling 130 miles 
west of the Missouri River, they were discouraged by the tide of emigration returning, 
so abandoned the project and spent the summer near Brownsville, Nebraska, in breaking 
prairie, and in the fall he returned to his home at Kossuth. In 1861 he sold his farm 
and came to California, across the plains, driving a team composed of four yoke of 
oxen and one yoke of cows. He started April 10, 1861, with his family, and joined other 
emigrants at the Missouri River. They were five months and a half en route. He sold his 
team at Little Lake Valley and at Marysville took steamer for San Francisco. He then 
went to Humboldt Bay and engaged in farming near the town of Areata; but, owing to 
frequent depredations by hostile Indiana, he sold out in 1864 and went into the Napa Val- 
ley, where he engaged in farming, and later, in Solano County, until the fall of 1868, when 
he came to Santa Barbara. He then purchased 104 acres on the mesa, at $20 per 
acre, and engaged in general farming, being one of the pioneer farmers on the mesa. He 
continued farming about twelve years, then went into the hog business, breeding the Es- 
sex, Poland China and Berkshire breeds, fattening about 100 hogs each year, which lie 
manufactured into lard and bacon. For the past two years he has sold his increase to the 
butchers, as, with the increasing years, the responsibility was greater than he cared to 
assume. He now devotes more time to farming, and grows extensively the Chevalier bar- 
ley, with soft beard, which is more suitable for hay. 

Mr. Oliver was married in Kossuth, Iowa, in the spring of 1851, to Miss Catharine J. 
Blair. This union has been blessed with three children, two of whom survive: C. A. 
Oliver, a doctor in Chico, California, and J. B. Oliver, who is foreman of a stock ranch 
in Sonora, Mexico. 

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.