MUDDY CREEK TWP — Although Robert Oliver left the Portersville area at a relatively young age, he never forgot where he came from.

After he died May 16 at 91 years old, his final wish was to have his ashes spread on his family’s old property.

Oliver’s daughter, Wendy, and his longtime partner, Louise Wilson, spread his ashes at the property’s orchard on July 27.

The old Oliver family house, located on Hy-Spy Drive, was built in 1851 by George Oliver, Robert’s great-grandfather. It stayed in the family for more than 100 years before Chuck Smith bought it.

“They were the only people who ever owned it,” Smith said.

Oliver’s mother, Lillian, wanted to move out of the house and go to Africa, so she sold it to Smith in 1974.

In 2011, Oliver came to the property to spread the ashes of his sister, Julia Emma. Smith came into contact with Oliver a couple years before that, when Oliver called him.

After attending school in Portersville, Oliver attended Geneva College and Wheaton College and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1955, a few years after beginning to sing professionally.

He did multiple solo vocal performances at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl, and he made appearances with several symphonies, including the San Francisco Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 1958, he toured Europe in the world premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s “Threni.”

Late in life, he wrote a book about growing up called “Our Barn in the Summer: Remembering Portersville.”

The book, published in 2008, is 143 pages long. It is made up of poems that Oliver wrote, which detail some of his memories and knowledge of local history.

When Oliver came back to his childhood home two years ago, he gave Smith a copy of the book.

Wilson, 80, met Oliver in the mid 1970s. She said Oliver never dwelled on his childhood in Portersville, but he talked in detail about it, primarily when they first started going out.

“We reminisced together,” Wilson said.

She said his initial idea was to write a historical memoir for family members, because he realized that the kind of farm life he used to live was disappearing. He tried to write the book in this style, but it did not work out.

However, she said Oliver enjoyed writing poetry from time to time. He eventually joined a poetry group. The leader of that group was impressed, and encouraged him to write his book as a poetry collection.

When she first visited the Portersville area in the 1980s, she said it had changed quite a bit from the time when Oliver grew up.

“It lives in my mind because his description was so graphic,” Wilson said.

Oliver had kept a history of all the people who lived in the family house, which is a tradition Smith has continued with his family.

“There’s too much history already, I’d hate to drop it now,” Smith said.

When Smith bought the 80-acre property, he began to do some renovations to the house. He added 500 square feet to the house.

The house has a well that extends up to the kitchen that dates to 1854. Smith originally was not aware of the well, but he found the stone wall while working in the basement. He extended the stonework into the kitchen, strung lighting down the 50-foot deep hole and put a clear cover over the hole.