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Otis, Harrison Gray

American, 1765 - 1848

Biography

Harrison Gray Otis was the son of Elizabeth Gray Otis [1746-1779] and Samuel Alleyne Otis [1740-1814]. Elizabeth was the daughter of Harrison Gray [1711-1794], the sitter for a portrait by John Singleton Copley now in the NGA (1976.25.1). Harrison Gray was a merchant, as well as treasurer and receiver-general for the Province of Massachusetts Bay, a position that he held from 1753 until the eve of the American Revolution. He published his loyalist views in 1775 in a pamphlet titled The Two Congresses Cut Up. He fled Boston in 1776 and spent the rest of his life in England. Samuel Alleyne Otis, brother of pamphleteer James Otis and author Mercy Otis Warren, was also a merchant. Graduated from Harvard, he sold supplies and clothing to American troops during the Revolution, and also served in the state House of Representatives. He was later elected secretary of the United States Senate when the first federal congress convened in 1789.Both Samuel Alleyne Otis and Elizabeth Gray Otis are subjects of portraits now in the NGA (1980.11.1, 1980.11.2). [Compiled from sources and references recorded on CMS]

Bibliography

1887
Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography. 6 vols. New York, c.1887-1900:4:607 [entry on Samuel Alleyne Otis]
1924
Otis, William A. A Genealogical and Historical Memoir of the Otis Family in America. Chicago, 1924: 141

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