Oliver Hardy wounded at the Battle of Antietam on September 17, 1862 and was a recruiting officer for Company K, 16th Georgia Regiment. The elder Oliver Hardy assisted his father in running the vestiges of the family cotton plantation following the Civil War. He then bought a share in a retail business and was elected full-time Tax Collector for Columbia County, Georgia. Hardy's mother Emily Norvell was the daughter of Thomas Benjamin Norvell and Mary Freeman, descended from Captain Hugh Norvell of Williamsburg, Virginia who arrived in Virginia before 1635. The elder Hardy and Norvell married March 12, 1890; it was her
Oliver (given name) Oliver (given name) Oliver is a masculine given name of Old French origin; "Oliver" is one of Charlemagne's retainers in the 11th-century "Song of Roland". The name was generally associated with the Latin term/name "olivarius" "olive tree planter", but may have been connected with the Germanic names "*wulfa-" "wolf" and "*χarja-" "army", or the Old Norse" Óleifr" (Ólaf); or a genuinely West Germanic name, perhaps from "ala-" "all" and "wēra" "true", or from "alf" "elf" and "hari" "army, warrior" (in both cases possibly cognate with Álvaro) and Greek name Eleutherios Modern variants include French "Olivier", Hungarian "Olivér", Irish "Oilibhéar" or