SOUTH BEND – A new state historic marker will be publicly dedicated on Aug. 8 to honor local industrialist J.D. Oliver, president and owner of the influential Oliver Chilled Plow Works for more than a century, along with his family.
Joseph Doty Oliver’s mansion at 808 W. Washington St., known as Copshaholm, is now part of The History Museum. The ceremony will begin at 1pm on the outskirts of Copshaholm. Parking will be available at the museum and on neighborhood streets.
Oliver, whose father, James, invented the Oliver cooled plow, grew the family business internationally and made it one of the largest in the world in the late 1800s, the marker states. He named his mansion Copshaholm after his father’s Scottish birthplace. The Oliver family was instrumental in the early growth of South Bend, as they financially supported an opera house, a hotel, a playground and housing for your workforceand, among other things.
The marker is the sixth state historic marker will be installed in St. Louis County in the last eight years and among several others erected since the 1960s. More recently, markers honored the South Bend Blue Sox women’s professional baseball team on Ironwood Drive, near the IU South Bend student housing complex; African-American lawyers J. Chester and Elizabeth Allen at 115 S. Lafayette Blvd., UI South Bend near 1700 Mishawaka Ave.; O South Bend Better Homes Project at North Elmer and Keller streets, and poet Kenneth Rexroth at Avenida Parque, 828.
The Indiana Historical Bureau, a division of the Indiana State Library, oversees the state historic marker program (in.gov/history).
This article originally appeared in the South Bend Tribune: Indiana Historical Landmark Honoring J.D. Oliver’s South Bend Mansion
