Page 28 - Copshaholm Curriculum Book_2015

Oliver Family History 2

of the children stood by and sobbed. The old stone cottage was locked, the key turned
back to the landlord, and they began their journey.

The eldest son, George Jr. had married and had a family. He remained in
Scotland, so only four children, Dorothy, 20, Robert, 18, who was sick at the time,
William 14, and James, 12, departed for America with their parents.

They left their village in March 1835, their few remaining belongings piled on
carts. Neighbors accompanied them the first two miles on their journey to Annon,
Scotland, a waterfront town near the border of England. They covered 12 miles the first
day. On the second day they reached Annon. They caught a cattle boat for Liverpool
the next day. The decks were so crowded with sheep and cattle that planks were
placed over the animals to form a crude bridge on which passengers walked to get to
their makeshift cabins.

They reached Liverpool the next morning, but the seas were too rough and the
ship couldn’t reach the dock. Terrified passengers were loaded into boats and rowed to
shore. They were to set sail from Liverpool the next day aboard the ship “Halo” and
spent a sleepless night at a public house. The Oliver family worried that they wouldn’t
be allowed to board the ship because William was sick. William’s illness was
overlooked and they sailed for America on April 3, 1835.

The trip to New York took seven weeks and four days. Severe weather caused a
rough crossing of the Atlantic. For the first three weeks most of the passengers, many
of them seasick, remained below deck. Two deaths occurred, one from the dreaded
smallpox virus, and the bodies were buried at sea. James got in trouble by asking the
captain to explain how the dead people could ever be found on judgment day.
Elizabeth was forced to remain cabin-bound because of her lame husband and sick
son. James, however, ran the decks, climbed the rigging, and mixed with the sailors.

One day, while the ship was been tossed in rough seas, George declared that
there was no way they were going to see America. James wasn’t worried, however. He
explained that the sailors on deck were swearing and surely wouldn’t risk eternal
damnation if death were actually near.

The Olivers were accustomed to the beauty of Scotland and New York looked
ugly. They spent little time there and soon took a steamboat up the Hudson River to
Albany. The steamboat burned wood and stopped every few miles for fuel. The Olivers
ate oatmeal, brown bread and smoked bear meat. At Albany, where an Indian sold
them sassafras for tea and dried blackberries, a 17-mile railroad ran northwest to
Schenectady, New York. The historic locomotive DeWitt Clinton was attached by a
leather hose to a railcar that held large piles of wood and several barrels of water for
making steam. Behind this railcar were three first-class cars resembling stagecoaches
and four “emigrant” flatcars equipped with wooden benches on which the Oliver family
rode.

At Schenectady the Olivers took a boat on the Erie Canal that had been
completed just a few years earlier. After a three-day journey they changed boats at
Montezuma, New York and continued to Geneva, New York, to the farm of James
Goodwin, father-in-law of John Oliver, the first of the Oliver sons to leave Scotland.
John’s farm was seven miles away, but within two days the Olivers were residing in
John’s small log framed farmhouse.