POLLOCK, Oliver, merchant, born in Ireland in 1737; died in Mississippi, 17 December, 1823. He came to this country with his father, and settled in Cumberland county, Pennsylvania He engaged in business in 1762 at Havana, Cuba, where he became intimate with Governor-General O'Reilly, and, when the latter was made governor of Louisiana by the king of Spain, Pollock moved to New Orleans. By a wise and generous action, during the scarcity of provisions in that city, he gained a reputation that made him able to be of great use to the Americans in New Orleans. When the Revolutionary war opened, Pollock was in possession of large wealth and much political influence. In 1777 the secret committee of the United States appointed him "commercial agent of the United States at New Orleans," which post he held until the close of the war with great credit to himself and greater good to the United States. He became to the west what Robert Morris was to the east. His fortune was pledged to his country. To his financial aid the United States owes the success of General George Rogers Clarke in the Illinois campaign of 1778. During that year he borrowed from the royal treasury, through Governor Bernardo de Gálvez, $70,000, which he spent for Clarke's expedition and the defense of the frontier. But the poverty of the United States involved him, as it did Morris, in severe losses.

In 1783 he was appointed United States agent at Havana, where he was imprisoned in 1784 for the debts of the United States, amounting to $150,000. Being released on parole, he returned to this country in 1785. In 1791 congress discharged this debt, but failed to remunerate Pollock for his services. He retired to Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, in 1791, impoverished. In 1797, 1804, and 1806 he was nominated for congress; but, although he received the popular vote of his county, he was not elected. In 1800 he was an inmate of the debtors' prison in Philadelphia, but within a few years he accumulated property again, and in 1815 he moved to Mississippi, where he died. He was a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the Hibernian society of Philadelphia. See a sketch of him by Reverend Horace E. Hayden (1883).