RARE "Los Angeles Times" Harrison Gray Otis Signed 2X4 Card For Sale

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."