Fire Bucket, "Saml. A. Otis / 1775"

1775

This bucket appears to have belonged to Samuel Allyne Otis (1740-1814), who was a significant political figure in Massachusetts during and after the American Revolution. After graduating from Harvard, Otis engaged in mercantile pursuits in Boston. He was a member of the state house of representatives in 1776 and again from 1784, when he was elected speaker of the house, to 1787. In addition, Otis was a member of the Board of War in 1776, a member of the Massachusetts constitutional convention, and a member of the Continental Congress in 1787 and 1788. Otis was elected the first Secretary of the United States Senate in April 1789, a position in which he served until his death in 1814. His brother, James Otis, was a lawyer and an influential Revolutionary patriot who made the argument that Britain did not have the right to tax colonists unrepresented in Parliament. Samuel Otis’ sister, Mercy Otis Warren, was a writer and one of the first female historians. Her most important work was the History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution (1805).