APS Member History

1	Name:	Andrew Oliver
	Year Elected:
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	1706
	Death Date:	3/3/1774

	Andrew Oliver (28 March 1706–3 March 1774) was a public officeholder, merchant, and a member of the American Philosophical Society via his 1768 election to the American Society.* Born in Boston to a wealthy and politically connected family, he earned his A.B. (1724) and M.A. (1727) from Harvard College and, with his brother, formed a mercantile business. After winding his way through multiple small public posts, he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1743–46) before the governor named Oliver the Secretary of the Province (1755/56–71). These were crucial years for Oliver. He had the misfortune of being named by the Crown (without his knowledge) the appointee to collect the Stamp Act taxes (1765); worse, he miscalculated—he did not immediately disavow the appointment, which led to (correct) suspicions he planned to enforce this new (and to many colonials, unconstitutional) form of direct taxation. Before daybreak on August 14, 1765, before the Stamp Act even went into effect, an increasingly well-liquored mob hanged, ceremonially stamped upon, then ignited Oliver’s effigy; they obliterated a new building they surmised would be his Stamp Office and later attacked and looted his home. He publicly renounced the appointment immediately. In 1770, he took up a loyalist position in the investigation of the Boston Massacre. But with Oliver’s continued attachment to Thomas Hutchinson, who rose to governor (1770/71), Oliver rebounded and ascended to lieutenant governor. Yet some letters from both men, lauding the Crown’s attempts to restore authority and cheering the arrival of British regulars, fell inexplicably before Benjamin Franklin, the Massachusetts Assembly’s Agent in London—he forwarded them back to Boston where their presentment to and publication by the House of Representatives electrified the city. Oliver’s wife soon died, and then so too Oliver; the Sons of Liberty cheered as the grave was closed. * There is some question whether he, or his son—or both—were elected to the APS in about the same timeframe; details on the confusion appear in Whitfield J. Bell, Jr, Patriot-improvers; Biographical sketches of members of the American Philosophical Society, (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1997), 1:514–15. (PI, ANB, SHG)

2	Name:	Andrew Oliver
	Year Elected:	1773
	Residency:	Resident
	Living? :	Deceased
	Birth Date:	11/13/1731
	Death Date:	12/6/1799

	Andrew Oliver (13 November 1731–6 December 1799) was a jurist, scientist, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1773. Born in Boston to a politically connected family, he attended Harvard college, graduating in 1749 before continuing his studies and earning master's degrees at Yale (1751) and Harvard (1752). After marrying, Oliver relocated to his wife’s hometown of Salem. He held minor public offices before becoming a county judge in 1761 and a representative of Salem to the Massachusetts General Court the following year. He had a complicated relationship with the growing rebel movement, oftentimes voting in favor of reductions in taxes and duties and yet was a member of a loyalist family and occupied a Tory position for a time (before realizing it made him a target and resigning). He joined a local militia in an attempt to regain approval, but upon asking to be excused from a meeting due to unfavorable weather, his constituents were left unsatisfied. When the war broke out, his loyalist family went into hiding while he remained in Salem, not for any political reason, but rather to continue his scientific inquiries into the nature of air. Most notably, Oliver proposed that comet tails were made up of air, and that life could exist in such air. Inspired by Benjamin Franklin and other contemporaries, he also asserted that electricity permeates air and studied its role in causing thunderstorms. Along with John Adams, he helped found the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Massachusetts. In the final years of his life, Oliver’s scientific activity mostly ceased due to his gout and declining finances and he died in such a state, at home in Salem. (ANB)

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