| Notes |
- Note 21 Thomas N. Otto
Uncle Tom operated a butcher shop in Sayville for many years. He later sold this and bought the coal business (by that time coal and oil) which had been established many years before by his brothers Louis A. and Bertram. He continued to operate this business until his death in 1949. During the 1920s Uncle Tom owed my father some money, which we were to regain by buying goods at his store. This irked my mother, since she had to pay Tom's higher prices. Tom maintained several butcher wagons, (later as trucks) which he sent into the surrounding area on regular routes to serve the people who lived beyond the Village limits.
To Descendants of the OTTO and DEGRAFF Families.
The accompanying family trees probably give you far more information about your ancestors than you cared to know.. Many of the strangers you see on the streets may be your shirt tail relatives. As with most family trees there must be some sap, and some black misshapen twigs. Fortunately this presentation gives them anonymity. Best leave them that way.
The records contain many gaps in information. Belle Otto worked on these gaps for several years,and Louis L. Otto has worked on them some. What is presented is the best information presently available. I hope it expands your knowledge of your"roots'.
Using Belle's recorded information and my limited memory I have tried to give some personality (color, as it is called on TV) to key figures among our direct ancestor. For the present generation - -your many cousins -- I will let you gather your own information, you probably know it better than I.
For my generation, I know of only five cousins left: 1 ) Louis L. Otto, a retired professor living in Brooksville, Fla.; 2) Dr. Bertram B. Otto, a retired dentist from Bayshore, Long Island, living in Daytona, Fla.; 3) Julia Otto Wallace, a retired realtor from Bellport, Long Island, living in Brookhaven, Long Island; 4) Betty DeGraff DeRoo, an housewife living in Moorestown, New Jersey; and 5) David DeGraff, a stock brokers agent living in Bayport, Long Island. There may be a few others living in the Yonkers area of whom I am not aware. Your generation is spread from California to Vermont, and possibly farther.
The Otto and DeGraff families are long-lived. Check the records shown. Prepare yourselves for an extended retirement. As a caution, there are two hereditary defects which John Otto Sr. passed along to his descendants. He was deaf, and was afflicted with familial palsy. His son John and his daughter Anna were very deaf very early in life. His sons Thomas and Louis were partially deaf. In my generation Bertram Otto and Herbert Parkhill are partially deaf. Hopefully this trait will die out, but at present it is treatable by hearing aids.
Severe incidence of familial palsy seems to have missed John Otto's children, but showed up in Belle and Louis L. Otto and Herbert Parkhill. Presently the condition is not curable, and only Inderal (propranolol) and ethyl alcohol are effective drugs against it. Indenial is also a heart and blood pressure medicine, and should only be taken under medical supervision. Ethyl alcohol is very effective, tho very temporary, but it is addictive, so beware. Hopefully this trait is recessive, and will also disappear.
Unfortunately for the impact of this genealogical record my generation is the last one to have lived in the Sayville area, and to have more than an inkling of the mono-ethnic character of West Sayville from the 1850's to the 1950's. One more generation of separation from our roots in Holland makes the connection with the "old country"; very tenuous also. For your information, West Sayville had only dutchmen (hollanders) in residence, northern East Islip had only Czechs, Waverly Ave. in Patchogue had only italians, Bohemia had only Czechs, Hagerman had only italians. There where also many other small mono-ethnic pockets on Long Island. World war II and its influx of city dwellers ended all this isolation.
There are several typing errors in this (per line that is).
Anyone wishing to type themselves a perfect copy has my permission.
L Otto ss
The history of the coal yard starts with Louis Alfred Otto
Louis Alfred Otto was the fifth child of John and Cornelia Hage Otto, born on June 5, 1875, in a family of five boys and one sister. His father was a "bayman", and as soon as the boys were physically able they accompanied their father on the bay to tong for clams or oysters, to dredge for scallops, to net for fish. Attendance at school was secondary to working, and only when the bay was iced over, or the weather was too mean to work in exposed locations were the boys allowed to go to school. As a result Louis received only about 4 years of schooling ---I during Januaries and Februaries. Later he supplemented this meager formal training with extensive reading.
Father John Otto was a good Dutchman and believed in paying homage to his religion, requiring his family to sit through long prayers and devotions, a practice not understandable to young children to get out and play with their contemporaries. In spite of irksome prayer time at home, Louis and his brothers hung around local out-of-doors revival meetings enough to become well versed in the hymns which were used, so he could teach them to his daughter later.
Apparently father John Otto was a strict disciplinarian while at work too. Per my father, one day he was berating John Jr. for loafing while tonging. To escape the tirade John Jr. jumped overboard and swam to an oyster lot stake for support. The stake, weakened by torpedo worms, broke off, and John Jr. had no choice but to come back to the boat and face his father, who was armed with a rope's end. As soon as they were able to support themselves all of the boys left home and made their own way in the world.
Louis, and his younger brother Bert, chose to buy their own sailboat and to live on-board her, ice-out to ice-in, while tonging clams in Prince's Bay on the southeasterly side of Staten Island, and selling their catches at the Fulton Fish Market in New York. Somewhere around 1900-1902 Lou fell from the deck into the hold, badly injuring one knee. After months in a hospital on Staten Island, with his knee cap being replaced by a silver plate, he emerged on crutches and with a brace on his leg. Facing insuperable diff~ties in resuming their former life, Lou and Bert returned to Sayville to create a new world for themselves.
The new world emerged as Otto Bros. Retail Coal Sales. They purchased a piece of property on the north side of the Long Island Railroad tracks in Sayville, put in a railroad siding and the necessary bins, and became coal dealers. After about five years Bert decided to become a butcher, worked with brother Tom to learn the business, and set up a butcher store in Bayshore. The coal yard became Louis A. Otto, Coal and Wood, Tel. Conn. 157.
The coal yard continued to operate for many years. Lou created many mechanical coal moving machines to reduce the back-breaking labor normally present, many of these seemed patentable, but a friend of his in Sayville named Rohm had a valid patent on "friction tape". Goodyear and Firestone produced and sold this material without paying royalties, and postponed and delayed the law suits which Rohm threw at them until he ran out of money. Lou did not bother with patents, but soon engineers from Link Belt appeared and went over his machines with measuring tapes (with Lou's permission) and in a few years had commercial versions of his machines on the market.
During the nineteen teens there were two to six draft horses stabled in the barn behind our house to provide tractive effort to the coal delivery wagons. These were joined by two to four milk cows, two to six pigs, and 25 to 40 chickens. Lou was a frustrated farmer, and harvested hay and grain for his animals from many outlying fields. Our gardens were extensive, with asparagus patches, ever bearing strawberries, many rows of peanuts, potatoes, cabbages, brussels sprouts, etc. During WW I we were nearly self sufficient by gardening and canning. Very early in my life I learned to ride my bike to Bayport, West Sayville and Sayville to deliver excess milk from our cows to selected customers.
During the early WW I years Lou became interested in lumbering, and developed a portable saw mill with which he could "log-off"; the marketable maple, oak, and chestnut on private estates in Smithtown, Ronkonkoma, and South Haven. The increasing difficulty encountered in buying carload lots of coal, unless you had appropriate political connections, led Lou to sell the coal and wood business to Cecil Proctor, a local politician. Thereafter he devoted full time to the saw mill. When US entered WW I he moved the mill to the Patchogue yard of Bailey and Sons, and cut up locust trees into billets for policeman's clubs. In November 1918 Lou received "Greetings from the President" to report for his Army physical, but the end of the war canceled this.
At the end of the war the saw mill was sold, and the proceeds used to purchase tools and materials for the Cuddle Chair Co. Cuddle Chairs unfortunately did not sell, and the investment was lost, so Lou turned to his first skill, clamming. He built, with the help of his cousin Doodle Otto, a 30 ft. V bottom clamming boat, white oak frames, long-leaf yellow pine keel and planking. With this boat he again became a bayman, and with Sylvenus Titus James as a partner, he tonged clams in Great South Bay. One year there was a heavy set of scallops in the bay, so they added a mast, spars, jib and mainsail to the boat and dredged for scallops.
Back at home, Louis Leslie Otto and others opened the scallops and prepared them for market. Joseph Weeks joined the team on the boat, and that winter Vene James died. Joe Weeks and Lou Otto clammed for a year or two longer, then came ashore and started a concrete building block business. The plant was at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Church St., north of Sayville. This business prospered moderately, but in 1930 the breaking of a drag-line cable caused lacerations in Lou's arm, an erysipelas infection, and Lou Otto's death.
The coal yard established by Lou and Bert Otto around 1902 was purchased by their older brother Tom in the late nineteen twenties and operated by him until his death in 49, and by his two daughters until 1959. About 1915 Louis Ruzicka became a wagon driver and delivery man for my father, and after serving in ~, he returned to the same job. He continued in this capacity for each successive owner, until retiring About 1968.
Lou Otto rarely spent an evening at home. He maintained an office downtown in his brother Tom's butcher store, and roamed Main St., account book in his pocket, to meet his debtors when they had money. Saturdays were pay days then, and nearly everyone went shopping along Main St. that evening, so Lou was busy. His favorite haunt was Jake Stryker's fish market on South Main St., counters in front, fish storage and preparation room in the back, but in between was a lounging room with a card table and a pot-bellied stove. Pinochle was the favorite game. Lou also enjoyed watching baseball, would attend the local toE-team games, and would even take his family along in the trusty model T to the out-of-town games.
During his entire adult life ashore Lou was an active member of the Sayville Military Band, playing the helical bass horn. His brother Tom played the baritone horn in this same band, and employee Lou Ruzicka played the Sousaphone.
I (LLO) believe that when I was born, as soon as my sex was established he went out and purchased an old Alto Horn so I could join him in the band. I did join this group at an early age, playing the Eb alto for many years, then switching to the Bb trumpet until leaving for college in 192~.
The John Otto children never operated as a cohesive group due to some family argument in the early 19OOs. I saw my uncle Tom whenever I went into his butcher shop, but the other uncles and aunts I almost never saw. In the early twenties uncle Tom was trying to grow potatoes in sea weed in the beach sand, and one day all.five brothers, John, Tom, Case, Lou, and Bert got together on Tom';s boat (somehow I got to go along) to go to the beach and plant these potatoes. The going was rough outside of greene's river, and when we went into the west slip in West Sayville to get fuel, the boat sailed round and round the same spot. The anchor had fallen overboard from the foredeck and tied us to the bottom. His father indicated to me that this was a good example of uncle Tom's seamanship. In spite of this incident the rest of the day passed peacefully, but this is the last brotherly reunion of which we know.
Louis Alfred Otto was a tall man (6'-3") blue eyes, with dark wavy hair and a cookie-duster mustache. He was very muscular from a lifetime of hard physical labor. He enjoyed reading, playing cards, watching baseball, and the military band.
Note 9 Note 2] modified 7/27/03 per conversation with JOW)
Thomas N. Otto, Uncle Tom operated a butcher shop in Sayville for many years. (Per JOW 7/27/03 he was making allot of money and Mom remembers the figure of $200,000 per year being mentioned- does not know if it was the gross or net income.) He later sold this (per JOW to a Mr Reylick of Sayville for $50,000) and bought the coal business( per JOW 7/27/03- the coal and wood business was sold by Louis and Case to a Mr. Proctor who ran it about ten years, Mr. Proctor did not like to get his hands dirty, when he sold it to Thomas Nelson around 1922.
Apparently when Thomas was in the butcher business he borrowed $5,000 from his brothers Louis and Case and thereafter the wives of Louis and Case tried to come to the butcher shop and have a free open charge account to pay off the debt which Thomas wife Julia did not like. Well this became a big thing and the brothers became estranged and may not have spoken to each other thereafter. Mom thinks that the $5,000 did get repaid.) (by that time coal and oil) which had been established many years before by his brothers Louis A. and Bertram.
(Per JOW 7/27/03 Mom recalled the her father talked with his wife in the early 1930 to discuss changing the business to coal and oil) He continued to operate this business until his death in 1949. During the 192O's Uncle Tom loaned my father some money, which we were to regain by buying goods at his store. This irked my mother, since she had to pay Tom's higher prices. Tom maintained several butcher wagons, (later as trucks) which he sent into the surrounding area on regular routes to serve the people who lived beyond the village limits.
Note 22
Henry "Doodle" Otto was a strong-minded local character. As a young man he had served in World War I, then became a camera man in Hollywood, and traveled world wide. Later he settled in West Sayville. He was an accomplished boat builder, and had a shop near Greene's Creek. He swore in front of everyone, including the neighbors children. Then his shop lease ran out, the neighbors put so much pressure on the landlord that the lease was not renewed.
He became partially deaf.
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1873 - 1949 (76 years)
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