Oliver, Charles James, 1831-1914.

Charles James Oliver, Confederate soldier, Methodist minister, and interior decorator, was born 16 May 1831, in Warwick, England, lived in Athens, Georgia, and died in 1914, in Atlanta, Georgia. He is buried in Athens.

Oliver's father was a craftsman who worked on plaster friezes at Franklin College, in Athens, Georgia, and Oliver probably trained under him. At the start of the Civil War, Oliver joined the Troup Artillery (which became part of Cobb's Legion, then part of Cabell's Artillery Battalion) and became a soldier-chaplain. After the war he became a Methodist minister and served in Burke County (1866); worked in a Savannah, Georgia, mission (1867); and married Nanny Reeves (1867; died 1868). The couple moved to Atlanta, where he worked in a mission (1868) and in 1869, he gave up his ministry and became an interior decorator. He is believed to have painted the inside of the Georgia state capitol building.