Queer Places:
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
St Philip's Episcopal Church, 34 Water St, Mattapoisett, MA 02739
Andrew Oliver (March 14, 1906 - October 20, 1981) was an American historian
and lawyer who had served as first vice president and an honorary trustee of
the New York Historical Society. He was a member of the Horace Walpole Society,
elected in 1965, and also served as its chairman. He was also a member of the
Tavern Club and of the Club of Odd Volumes and of the Century Association of
New York.
He was the author of "Faces of a Family" (1960), ''The Portraits of John and Abigail Adams'' (1967), "The Notebook of John Smibert" (1969), "Portraits of John Quincy Adams and His Wife" (1970), "The Journal of Samuel Curwen, Loyalist" (1972), "Auguste Edouart's Silhouettes of Eminent Americans, 1838-1844 (1977), and ''The Portrait of John Marshall'' (1977).
Oliver, who was born in Morristown, N.J., the son of William Hutchinson Pynchon Oliver, a lawyer, and Lydia Winthrop Seabury; through her he was descended from the Right Reverend Samuel Seabury, first Episcopal Bishop in the US. He also descended from early comers as Governor John Winthrop but also from one who went back in 1776, the loyalist Peter Oliver, former chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature. Following preparation at the Mesa Ranch School near Phoenix, Arizona, Oliver entered Harvard College with the class of 1928, earning his A.B. degree before continuing at Harvard Law School, from which he received the L.L.B. degree in 1931. He was a managing partner of Alexander & Green and specialized in corporate, trust and estate law. He was a director of the Shattuck Denn Mining Company.
He was a vestryman at Trinity Church for many years and served as chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of New York in the 1960's under Bishop Horace W.B. Donegan. He served as a trustee of the General Theological Seminary, from which he had the honorary degree of Doctor of Canon Law. He was treasurer of The Corporation for the Relief of Widows and Children of Clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York, and a member of the Most Venrable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem. Oliver was a former president of the Essex Institute in Salem, Mass. and of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts; former secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston; a member of the American Antiquartian Society in Worcester, Mass., a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a commissioner of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington; trustee of the New Bedford Whaling Museum and of the Friends of Winterthur; chairman of the Associate of the John Carter Brown Library, and Council member of the Institute of Early American History and Culture. Above all, he was particularly active as a trustee of the Boston Athenaeum.
He died on October 20, 1981, in Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Oliver, who lived in Boston, was 75 years old. With others of his family, he long summered in Mattapoisett, where he first met his wife. He was survived by his wife, Ruth Blake; two sons, Andrew Jr. and Daniel, both of Washington; a daughter, Mrs. Daniel Morley of Cambridge, Mass., and seven grandchildren.
My published books:
