Background
Charles Rollin Otis was born on April 29, 1835, in Troy, New York, the son of Elisha Graves Otis and Susan A. (Houghton).
Charles Rollin Otis was born on April 29, 1835, in Troy, New York, the son of Elisha Graves Otis and Susan A. (Houghton).
After obtaining a grade-school education at Halifax, Vermont, and Albany, New York, Charles entered his father's machine shop at the age of thirteen, and learned his trade.
Charles Otis became especially familiar with steam engines, and when his father moved to Bergen, New Jersey, to become master mechanic of a bedstead factory there, young Otis, although but fifteen, was made engineer. The following year when his father moved to Yonkers, New York, he went with him and assisted in the erection of a new factory there. He worked side by side with his father in the construction of an elevator, and was so impressed by the safety appliance devised by the elder Otis that he urged the latter to establish a shop for the building of elevators. Close association with his father developed in the son the same integrity and genius for invention possessed by the former, and upon his death in 1861 Charles was in a position successfully to carry on the elevator business, which his father had established in Yonkers. As the demand for elevators increased during the sixties, Otis and his younger brother supplied it, and at the same time continued to make improvements in the machinery.
On October 18, 1864, Charles Otis obtained a patent for elevator brakes; in 1865 he secured three patents for improvements on his father's steam hoisting engine; on September 10, 1867, he patented an improved valve for the steam engine; and the following year, still other improvements. He succeeded, too, February 21, 1871, in securing a reissue of his father's original patent of 1861, which was assigned to the new firm known as Otis Brothers & Company, organized in 1864. By 1872 the firm was doing a business of $393, 000. After the company was incorporated a few years later and the business continued to grow, Otis and his brother retired (1882), selling their holdings to a syndicate of capitalists. Several years later, however, the brothers regained control and Charles was again elected president. He continued in this capacity until 1890, when he retired and spent the balance of his life in travel.
Otis' death occurred at Summerville, South Carolina. His second cousin and nurse, Margaret Otis Nesbit, claimed that he had married her in December 1926 and contested his will, in which he had left her $10, 000 out of an estate of $1, 250, 000. After seven months of litigation, and the payment of gifts, annuities, and legal expenses, the estate amounted to $461, 000, of which the widow received $130, 000.
Charles Otis obtained more than 30 patents, including: a patent for elevator brakes (1864); three patents for improvements on his father's steam hoisting engine (1865); patent for an improved valve for the steam engine (1867), etc. Otis was founder and president of Otis Brothers & Company, which installed steam elevators in the Washington Monument (1880) and the Eiffel Tower; they installed the first electric elevator in New York City (1889).
Charles Otis was appointed a member of the board of education of Yonkers in 1886 and served continuously in that capacity for a great many years. A member of the committee on teachers and instruction, he devoted much time to visiting and inspecting schools.
On August 28, 1861, Charles Otis married Caroline F. Boyd of New York, who died in 1925.
