Andrew Oliver (149)
Election date: 1768 (Elected to the American Society.)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 Andrew Oliver (e. 1773)—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)
Three editions in 1773: two in Boston, one in Salem. Four editions in 1774: three in London and one in Dublin. According to ESTC, the Boston (1773) edition entitled The letters of Governor Hutchinson, and Lieut. Governor Oliver... appeared in at least three printing states with variations in errors and errata (see details in ESTC W37615). The other Boston edition bore the title The representations of Governor Hutchinson and others, contained in certain letters transmitted to England, and afterwards returned from thence, and laid before the General-Assembly of the Massachusetts-Bay. Together with the resolves of the two Houses thereon.
Two standalone editions: one published in 1770 and reprinted in 1774. But it also appears as appended to the Journal of the Honorable House of Representatives of His Majesty's province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England, begun and held at Harvard-College in Cambridge, in the county of Middlesex, on Wednesday the thirtieth day of May, Annoque Domini, 1770 (per Evans 11734, 11736, 11735, 12120)