William Bacon Oliver (May 23, 1867–May 27, 1948) was a Congressman from Alabama.
He was born in Eutaw, Alabama, graduated from the University of Alabama in 1887 and from the law department in 1889. After additional courses at the University of Virginia in the same year, he was admitted to the Alabama bar, and set up a practice in Tuscaloosa.
He became dean of the law school of the University of Alabama in 1909, serving until 1913, then ran successfully for Congress in 1914, and remained there for eleven Congresses, not standing for reelection in 1936.
He then served as a special assistant to the United States Attorney General from 1939 to 1944, at which time he retired. He died in 1948, and is buried in the Eutaw Cemetery in Eutaw.
The William Bacon Oliver Lock and Dam on the Black Warrior River in Alabama is named after him, as is the Oliver Lake behind the dam.
Famous quotes containing the words william, bacon and/or oliver:
“An illiterate king is a crowned ass.”
—Medieval English proverb.
Said by the chronicler William of Malmesbury to have been much used by King Henry I of England (1068-1135)
“Man, being the servant and interpreter of nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“My grandmother stood among her kettles and ladles.
Smiling, in faulty grammar,
She praised my fortune and urged my lofty career.
So to please her I studied—but I will remember always
How she poured confusion out, how she cooled and labeled
All the wild sauces of the brimming year.”
—Mary Oliver (b. 1935)