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Up for sale a RARE! "Los Angeles Times" Harrison Gray Otis Hand Signed 2X4 Card.
ES-3999
Harrison
Gray Otis (February 10,
1837 – July 30, 1917) was the president and general manager of the Times-Mirror
Company, publisher of the Los Angeles Times. Otis was born near Marietta, Ohio, on February 10, 1837, the son of Stephen and
Sally (Dyar) Otis. His father was from Vermont and his mother, a native
of Nova Scotia, Canada, came to Ohio from Boston, Massachusetts,
with her family. The young Otis received schooling until he was fourteen, when
he became a printer's apprentice at the Noble
County Courier in Ohio.
Otis and Eliza Ann Wetherby were
married in Lowell, Ohio, on September
11, 1859, and they had three daughters, Lillian Otis McPherson, Marian Otis Chandler, who
was secretary of Times-Mirror, and Mabel Otis Booth.
He was a Kentucky delegate to the Republican National Lincoln for
president in 1860. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, he left his job as
a compositor in the
office of the Louisville Journal to
volunteer as a private for the Union army. Otis fought in the 23rd Ohio Infantry. He was
promoted through the ranks and was made an officer, a lieutenant, in November
1862 and left the Army in July 1865 as a captain.
He was wounded twice in battle, was "twice breveted for gallant
and meritorious conduct" and was promoted seven times.
After the war, Otis was Official Reporter of the Ohio House of
Representatives, then moved to Washington, D.C., where he was a government
official, correspondent and editor. In 1876, he and his family moved to Santa Barbara, California,
which had a population then of about 3,000, and he purchased a local newspaper,
the Santa Barbara effective March 11 of that year. He gave up journalism temporarily in 1879 when
he was offered the post of chief government agent or special treasury agent of the Northern Seal Islands, now known as
the Pribilof Islands, in the
Pacific Ocean off the coast of the newly acquired territory of Alaska. He left that position in 1881 to return to Santa
Barbara.
Otis was editing his newspaper there when he went to Los Angeles—a larger
city with a population of some 12,500—and agreed with the firm take over editorial responsibilities at
the Los Angeles Daily Times, now the Los Angeles Times.
Beginning August 1, 1882, he was to "have the editorial conduct of
the Daily Times and Weekly Mirror," according
to an announcement in the Times. Later the company was named Times-Mirror, and
on April 6, 1886, it was reorganized, with Albert McFarland and W.A. Spalding
as owners and Otis as president and general manager. That was Otis's official title at the time of
his death in 1917. The Times story about his demise noted that
the Times-Mirror Company was "publishers [sic]
of the Los Angeles Daily Times." The article called Otis the
"principal owner" of the newspaper but never referred to him as
publisher. Eleven years earlier, however the Associated Press had called him
"publisher of the Los Angeles Times."
Otis was known for his conservative political views, which were reflected in the
paper. His home was one of three buildings that were targeted in the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing. During his time as publisher of the Times Otis
is known for coining the phrase "You are either with me, or against
me."