William A. Otis
W.A. Otis was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1864 to a successful Ohio steel maker. He enrolled in Yale University and was to have graduated in 1886 until an unknown illness sidetracked his academic career. Because his physician recommended he settle in fairer climates, we can guess that the illness was likely tuberculosis. Otis arrived in Colorado in 1885. He spent a year in cattle ranching before moving to Colorado Springs where he lived the remainder of his life.
Otis was active in Colorado Springs financial circles for many years. In 1892, he founded the brokerage firm W.A. Otis & Company. This firm specialized in marketing mining stocks from Cripple Creek. W.A. Otis & Company had offices in Denver and Colorado Springs, as well as such far afield towns as Cleveland and Casper, Wyoming. His branching out allowed Otis to tap into other capital markets to market Cripple Creek stocks. It also made him quite wealthy.
Otis was a director of the First National Bank of Colorado Springs and of the Colorado Title & Trust Company. He was president of the Utah Ice & Storage Company, as well as an officer of the Producers & Refiners Corporation of Wyoming. He was a member of the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, the El Paso Club, and the Cheyenne Mountain Country Club, among many others.
Otis had three sons from a first marriage in 1887. He married a second time in Chicago in 1909.
Read about the stockbrokers of Cripple Creek