close of his life, while he was oscillating in a half-rational
condition between Andover and Boston, with an occasional visit to
Plymouth, he fell into a fit of pessimism and despair during
which he spent two days in obliterating the materials for his
biography, by destroying all his letters and manuscripts. He did
as much as he could to make impossible any adequate account of
his career or any suitable revelation of his character as
developed in his correspondence. Over and above this, however,
the materials of his life are of small extent, and fragmentary.
It is to his formal publications and the common tradition of what
he did, that we must turn for our biographical and historical
estimate of the man. In this respect he is in analogy with
Patrick Henry who appears only fitfully in history, but with
meteoric brilliancy; or with Abraham Lincoln the narrative of
whose life for the first forty-five years can be adequately
written in ten pages.

The American Otises of the seventeenth century were of English
descent. The emigration of the family from the mother country
occurred at an early day when the settlements in New England were
still infrequent and weak. The Otis family was among the first
to settle at the town of Hingham. Nor was it long until the name
appeared in the public records, indicating official rank and
leadership. From Hingham, John Otis, who was born in 1657,
ancestor of the subject of this sketch, removed to Barnstable,
near the center of the peninsula of Massachusetts, and became one
of the first men of that settlement. He was sent to the
Legislature and thence to the Council of the Colony in which he
had a seat for twenty-one years. During this period he was
promoted to the place of Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and