Gallery 3 Highlight: The Otis Family

Among the calls for American independence, some of the loudest voices belonged to the prominent Otis family of Boston. James Otis Jr. (1725-1783) was one of the earliest colonial legislators to protest British Parliament, and his brother, Samuel Allyne Otis (1740-1814), became the first Secretary of the US Senate. Their sister Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1814) was a playwright and poet who infused her writings with political messages.  

Samuel and James Otis each married into wealthy merchant families and their wives, Elizabeth Gray (1746- 1779) and Ruth Cunningham (1729- 1789), were Loyalists. Samuel and Elizabeth’s marriage suffered as Elizabeth mourned the loss of family and friends who fled to England during the war. Despite the divided loyalties of their respective families, Samuel and Elizabeth Otis had what appeared to be a loving and affectionate marriage. In a letter to his father-in-law Harrison Gray, Otis wrote about his late wife: “As she lived a saint, she died an Angel.”  

By contrast, James Otis and Ruth Cunningham Otis endured a bitterly unhappy marriage by all accounts. James Otis fought for American independence while his wife supported the colonies remaining under British rule. Their children were equally divided. The discord between James and Ruth Otis was known to many, including John Adams, who recalled Otis describing his wife as “a good wife, too good for him – but she was a tory, a high Tory.” Mercy Otis Warren was less charitable. In one letter to a friend, she called her sister-in-law a “Weak, Infatuated Woman who has heretofore Brought innumerable Difficulties upon her own Family.” If Ruth Otis wrote about the revolution or her husband, those letters remain undiscovered. James Otis died unexpectedly of a lightning strike in 1783, and Ruth Otis lived to see America become an independent nation.