| Notes |
- 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 wishing 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 difficulties 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, everbearing 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 policemans clubs. In November 1918 Lou received "Greetings from the President" to report for his army physical, but the end of the war cancelled 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 claming 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 of 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 WW1 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 town-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 memberof the Sayville Military Band, playing the helical bass horn. His brother Tom played the baritone horn in this same band, and employee Lou Rnzicka played the Sousaphone.
I (LLO) believe that when I was born, as soon as my sex was established he went out and purchased an Eb 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 1929.
[Cornelius Otto Descendents 7-18-05.pdf. FTW]
He became partially deaf.
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1877 - 1933 (55 years)
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