Oliver, Peter (1713–1791)

US judge. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to one of the city's first social and political families, he graduated from Harvard (1730), served as a common pleas and superior court judge for 24 years, and became chief justice of the superior court in 1771. He moved to Plymouth County, Massachusetts, in 1774, where he established an ironworks and built an imposing mansion, Oliver Hall. A prominent Loyalist, he left Boston with the British forces in 1776 and lived in Birmingham, England, until his death. American patriots burned his mansion in 1782.