The Life of HENRY WILLIAM OLIVER

Henry W. Oliver was an iron and steel maker and railroad and mining entrepreneur. He was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, and came to the United States as an infant. He had boyhood jobs with several important Pittsburgh firms, did some military service in the Civil War, then in the mid- 1860s joined the partnership of Lewis, Oliver & Phillips, bolt and nut makers. The scope of the business expanded into other iron specialties, and in 1888 it was incorporated as the Oliver Iron and Steel Co. In 1892, he heard of the Mesabi Range iron ore while in Minneapolis and leased mining land to form the Oliver Mining Co. His most notable memorial is the Henry W. Oliver Building on Smithfield Street in downtown Pittsburgh, begun in 1908 by his estate. He was also a Corporator of the Cemetery.