An American flag flutters over a secluded cemetery on a shady hill overlooking East Tallmadge Avenue and Home Avenue in North Akron.
Enclosed by a chain-link fence with a padlocked gate, the burial ground is the resting place of Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Bettes and 60 of his descendants.
Thousands of motorists drive past Bettes Corners Cemetery every day without even knowing it’s there. If it weren’t for brave men like Bettes, though, there would be no Fourth of July celebrations — or the United States, for that matter.
Bettes was born in 1752 in West Springfield, Mass., and joined the call for independence after British soldiers clashed with colonists in Lexington and Concord in April 1775. As a minuteman, Bettes served in Col. John Fellow’s regiment at the siege of Boston, joined Col. Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec and fought in the battle of Ticonderoga, N.Y., in Col. Edward Wigglesworth’s regiment.
A private, ensign and fifer, he was promoted to sergeant in 1777 at West Point, N.Y. Bettes spent the grueling winter of 1777-1778 with Gen. George Washington’s Continental Army at Valley Forge, Pa., battling starvation, illness and frostbite. After five years of service, multiple gunshot wounds and a few bayonet stabbings, Capt. Bettes petitioned in April 1780 for a military discharge.
According to a handwritten letter preserved in the National Archives, Bettes wrote directly to Gen. Washington:
“I would beg leave to lay before Your Excellency, that I have been in the Service of these States the greatest part of the time, Since the Commencement of Hostilleties.
“I have the Vanity to think, that my Conduct has been such as might deserve the Carractor of a good Soldier, and a faithfull friend to my Countery.
“I could with pleasure tarry longer in this Honorable Service, did not the pressing Necesseties of my small family put it forever out of my power.
“Heaven as a Just chastisement has been pleas’d to Afflict my Family with sickness for better than two years togeather, which makes it absolutely Necessary for me to give them my Presence and personal Assistance.
“Which layes me under the Disagreeable Necessaty to Request of your Excellency the favour of a Descharge. As in duty bound Shall ever Pray.”
Washington granted the request, and three years later, the Revolutionary War ended. For his service, Bettes received a pension and about 500 acres from the state of Massachusetts, including 150 acres in the wilds of Ohio.
Bettes and his first wife, Hannah, had nine children before she died of tuberculosis. He and his second wife, Candice, had 10 children. About 1816, a nearly 65-year-old Bettes decided to move his family to Tallmadge Township in the Western Reserve of Ohio.
About 20 relatives took the six-week journey in covered wagons drawn by oxen. The family settled in a double log cabin in a forested area northeast of the present-day intersection of Tallmadge and Home avenues, a crossing that became known as Bettes Corners.
Hearing the sound of wood being chopped, local pioneers welcomed the newcomers to Ohio with loaves of freshly baked bread and a crock of beans.
The Bettes family transformed the rugged landscape into a cozy home, but danger often lurked underfoot.
“I well remember with what childish anticipations we watched the oven door being let down, displaying an oven full of nicely browned apple, mince and pumpkin pies,” daughter Mary Bettes Allison wrote. “One morning as mother was sweeping the coals from the oven, she stood upon a large chip, several inches across. She noticed it was soft under the chip, but finished her work, and then looked to see the cause, which proved to be an immense rattlesnake coiled beneath it.”
The best-known story about Nathaniel Bettes is when he got into trouble with the Tallmadge Church board of deacons on a charge of hunting on a Sunday. Bettes defended himself admirably about the sabbath day violation.
“Brethren, I started for the meeting on Sunday morning and had gone but a short distance when I saw a nice, fat buck standing right in my pathway,” he told the board. “Being rather short of provisions, I asked the Lord if I might shoot that deer, and the Lord said ‘yes.’ So I went back to the house, got my Revolutionary rifle, killed the deer, took it home and dressed it, and then continued on to the meeting.
“Brethren, did I do right or wrong in obeying the voice of the Lord?”
Seeing the light, the panel voted unanimously to drop the charge.
Bettes witnessed great changes in the region, including the 1825 founding of Akron, which eventually annexed the neighborhood. Surveyors mapped out the Pennsylvania & Ohio Canal in the 1830s just west of the Bettes home.
The captain was 92 when he died in January 1840 — just three months before the canal opened.
He was buried with military honors on the steep hill overlooking his home, the beginning of Bettes Corners Cemetery. About 60 descendants would join him in the family plot, including relatives with the surnames Hogue, Tibbals, Randall, Holmes and Everhart.
The cemetery, which today is hidden behind a factory building, fell prey to time, weather, neglect and vandalism over the years. Nathaniel Bettes’ original marker toppled to the ground. In 1955, descendant Catherine C. Morrow of Chicago visited the plot and decided to donate a new headstone.
“We never expected to get an order for a monument to a Revolutionary War soldier — not in 1955 — but we are honored that we did,” Paul Buzzi, vice president of the North Hill Marble and Granite Co., told the Beacon Journal at the time.
An American flag flutters over a secluded cemetery where an American hero rests. He helped give us freedom, but, ironically, citizens aren’t free to stand at his grave. The padlocked gate is meant to keep vandals at bay.
Inside the chain-link fence, a sign reads: “The family members respectfully ask that you enjoy your visit to the cemetery and hope that you will appreciate the sacred nature of this historic family cemetery.”
Happy Fourth of July, Capt. Bettes ... and thank you!
Copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of the book Lost Akron from The History Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.