The life of John B. Oliver Jr.

In 1930, Robert Burett Oliver Sr. typed a memoir in which he discussed the history of his family and allied families. Several chapters mention life at the family home of Pleasant Gardens in Cape Girardeau County. The following is a brief look at his remembrances of his father.

John B. Oliver Jr. was born in Lincoln County, North Carolina, on June 21, 1815, a son of John B. Oliver Sr. and Amy Abernathy. While still a young boy, the family migrated to Cape Girardeau County in 1819, where he was educated at home before attending school in Cape Girardeau. Oliver was married twice. He first married Malinda Cobb in Knoxville, Tennessee, in October 1837. Two sons were born to this union, Richard and Charles. Tragically, both sons died young, 19 and 20 respectively. Malinda died in 1843. Two years later, he married Margaret Sloan, in Jackson on Oct. 23, 1845. Four children came from this union: Luella, John Franklin, Robert Burett and Lucius Henry Clay.

Oliver established Pleasant Hill Academy, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, on his property in 1853. The school was one of the first institutions of higher learning in the area. It would grow to include both boys' and girls' dormitories before closing due to the Civil War. It was renamed Fruitland Normal Institute in 1869.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, according to Robert, his father "was a great lover of the Union and regretted the possibility of the states being involved in a civil strife." When Southernleaning Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson called for volunteers, Charles A. Oliver answered the call to defend "state's right in the protection of property of its citizens." Charles Augustus died of bowel trouble while in Confederate service on Dec. 11, 1861. His stepmother Margaret and a family friend retrieved his body for burial in Old Appleton Cemetery.

According to the 1860 slave schedule, his father owned 34 slaves. According to Robert, the slaves remained on the farm even after the Emancipation Proclamation, until the night of April 14, 1864. On that night, all of the slaves, except for a few elderly women, left the property with Oliver's horses and mules for the military post in Cape Girardeau.

In his memoirs, Robert mentions the names of several slaves as well as the arrival of several refugee families, by name, from Arkansas who worked on his father's land for a few years. Robert details not only the names but size of family unit, and what, if anything, the families brought with them.

His father long suffered from severe asthma which, Robert, attributes, lead to his death. Due to his health, his father was mostly invalid for the last year and a half of his life. Robert and his mother were his only caregivers, as there were no nurses in the area. They fed his father "boiled sweet milk or fresh milk." His father died July 4, 1869, and was buried in Old Appleton Cemetery.