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| Affiliation | Nonpartisan |
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| Name | Otto C. Botz |
| Address |
, Missouri , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
October 20, 1881
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| Died | April 20, 1965
(83 years)
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| Contributor | RBH |
| Last Modifed | RBH
Nov 08, 2009 01:02am |
| Tags |
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| Info | Otto C. Botz, was owner of the mammoth Missouri State Chickeries of Jefferson City and directing head of a number of industries and corporations. He was born in St. Louis, October 20, 1881, the son of Charles J. and Elizabeth Mueller Botz, natives of Baden Germany. His paternal grandfather was Joseph Botz.
Joseph Botz was a descendant of a French soldier in the army of Napoleon who survived the Moscow expedition but settled in Germany instead of returning to France. Joseph Botz was active in the liberal movement in Germany in the 1840s and for that was banished, joining other distinguished and courageous men, including Carl Schurz, in coming to America in 1848. Bismarck later secured an order restoring the rights of those who participated in this attempt to liberalize the German government, and Joseph Botz returned to his native land and resumed his German citizenship.
By his father’s resumption of German citizenship, Charles J. Botz, who returned with this father to Germany, became automatically a German citizen. In 1874, he officially renounced his German citizenship and later became a citizen of this country through naturalization. Charles J. Botz while living in St. Louis learned the printer’s trade under Carl Schurz. For a short time he conducted a German newspaper at California, Missouri, then, in 1881, returned to St. Louis. From there he went to Sedalia the following year, becoming one of the owners of the Sedalia Journal of which he was editor from 1882 to 1917. The Journal attained prestige and profit under his administration.
Otto C. Botz was six months old when his parents moved to Sedalia. Growing up in a newspaper office, he naturally became interested in the business and in 1900 secured an interest in his father’s business and became business manager of the Journal. In 1902, for the value of the experience, he planned a world tour in which he should work his way. On this tour he was in Europe when the Russo-Japanese War broke out, so he did not go to the Orient as he had planned. At the end of 22 months and working in 35 states in America and 13 foreign countries, returning to Sedalia he became the managing head of the Botz & Sons Printing and Stationery Company, consisting of Charles J. Botz and his four sons, becoming nationally known as “the printers five”.
In March, 1921, this company purchased the Paul Hunt Stationery Store in Jefferson City to better conduct the State of Missouri Stationery contract they had secured at the beginning of the Gardner administration in 1917. In July of the same year, they organized the Jefferson City Printing Co., and in September the Art Shop. In October of the same year, all of these companies were merged into one corporation, purchasing the Hugh Stephens Printing Co. of which Otto G. Botz became President and General Manager. He was successful in building the new corporation operated as the Hugh Stephens Printing & Stationery Co., into one of the best equipped printing and stationery plants in the United States, specializing in college annual work (taking a big majority of all national prizes in this field), seed and nursery catalogs, county and bank work, and holding the State of Missouri printing, binding and stationery contracts as well as doing a general commercial printing, publishing and stationery business.
After the election of 1932, a group of local Democratic politicians, with the support of the newly elected members of the Printing Commission of the state of Missouri, saw fit to consider the state contracts as political patronage, whereupon after several months of harassing and pressure, the Botz Printing & Stationery Company (to which name the old Hugh Stephens Printing & Stationery Co. had been changed in 1928), sold its physical assets together with the retail office supply store and retired from active work in this field for a period of five yers, maintaining however its corporate structure, becoming a part of the Botz Industries. This later organization operated under the guiding hand of Otto C. Botz, the Botz Printing & Stationery Co., the Botz Real Estate and Investment Co., the Missouri State Chickeries, the Capitol Poultry Farms and the Panorama Nursery Corporation, all located in Jefferson City.
Otto C. Botz was also the inventor of “The Botz Quick Freezing Process,” holding patents on the last word in frozen dressed poultry.
Mr. Botz was married in June 1918 to Renee Odette Bichet, born and reared in Paris, France, where he had met her during his travels in 1903, she being the first French girl permitted to come to America during World War I. They were married in St. Louis, MO, where Mr. Botz was born, first moving to Sedalia, MO then later to Villa Panorama, Jefferson City. They had no children.
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