At the turn of the 20th Century, Wildwood was the summer home of the John G. Oliver family. Today, the grand Tudor-style mansion nestled on its 34-acre estate serves as the crown jewel of Mentor’s park system.
So, who were the Olivers? The following is an excerpt from “The Ancestors and Descendants of Zephaniah and Silence Alden Hathaway” by Margaret Oliver Collacott, which was published in 1961. It helps shed some light on one of Mentor’s leading families whose legacy is still felt today.
May Lockwood was born at the home of her grandparents in Newburgh. (Its proximity to the state asylum was frequently referred to by her husband to explain any eccentricities.) Her father at the time was in Columbus serving in the Ohio assembly from solon. The family moved to Cleveland in her early youth. She attended old Bolton School, Central Hi School and was graduated from Lake Erie Seminary, Painesville in 1890. It had been her intention to go on to Smith College, but acquaintance at the home of old family friends, Dr. & Mrs. J.M. Lewis, with their new boarder, whom she also saw on Sundays and at evening socials at the Unitarian Church, led her to a greater interest in marriage. She remained a loyal alumna of Lake Erie, watched its development into a 4-year college and served as trustee from 1922 to her death. The college awarded her the degree of doctor of humanities in 1934.
John Oliver came to Cleveland immediately after his graduation from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1882. He was employed at Warner & Swazey Co., and while head of the drafting room drew the plans for the Lick Telescope, at that time the largest in the world. In 1891, he became co-founder of Bardons and Oliver. May always had a keen interest in the company, and her counsel and support through the ups and downs of the machine tool business were a source of strength to her husband, and after his death, to their son.
The Olivers made several early trips to Europe to establish agencies for the company. Their congenial visits with the English agent and his wife influenced their choice of architecture when they built a home in Mentor in 1906. They had been among the first Clevelanders to spend their summers in that community, as early as 1892, planning for their children an opportunity to grow up in the country. The development of “Wildwood” remained a constant source of pleasure to them both – a home close to the woods, with spreading lawns and beautiful trees, where many windows and doorways and wide rooms welcomed their friends, a joyous home to be cherished by their children and grandchildren.
John gave his children the wonderful heritage of hearing read out loud much fine literature, and during their evening hours May taught her daughters her love of sewing. They started with running stitch on cheese cloth dusters, progressed to hemming dish towels, and when those stitches were fine enough, to linen napkins. She made domesticity both practical and fun. Margaret’s first cooking lesson was cream sauce and Baked Alaska – the first a rock bottom necessity, and the second “wowed her daughters’ parties” through their teens.
May Oliver was long active in community affairs. She was particularly interested in the Family Service Association, the Travelers Aid Society, (serving on both the Cleveland and national boards of those organizations) and the Cleveland Health Council, with special concern for the Children’s Fresh Air Camp. We quote from the memorial of the Travelers Aid Society: “her life was service, a long and useful career of voluntary activities in the social work field, and a selfless devotion to humanitarian causes to which she gave untiringly of her time, effort and wisdom. Her inexhaustible kindliness, gentleness and strength, thoughtfulness and sympathy, marked her path through life.”
A daughter and a niece feel that the word that seems best to express her is “valiant.”
Learn more about Wildwood Cultural Center at www.wildwoodmentor.com.