The House of Betts

Born in Wortham, Suffolk. The earliest known ancestor of the Betts line. Father of Robert.

Settled in Bearsted, Kent — the first confirmed Betts in the county that would shape this family for four generations. Married Agnes Terye. Father of Alexander. His move from Suffolk to Kent, roughly eighty miles, was a significant relocation in the sixteenth century, but Kent was prosperous and Maidstone was at the center of it.

Moved from Bearsted to West Peckham, on the edge of the Weald — the dense, rolling woodland of southern Kent, home to a thriving cloth trade. Nine children in nineteen years. Likely buried at the Church of St. Dunstan in West Peckham, a small Norman church that still stands. Father of John, the last Betts born and buried entirely in England, and grandfather of the boy who carried the name to America.

Sailed from England to Connecticut c. 1639, carrying a Bible printed in 1591. Co-founded Guilford, then became one of Norwalk's first settlers in 1660, purchasing a home lot on France Street. Nine children. Given the honored "round seat" in the meeting house — the highest mark of respect the community could bestow. His widow Mary survived him by over thirty years.

Born in Guilford, raised in Norwalk from the age of sixteen. Selectman of Norwalk and elected Deputy to the Connecticut General Assembly across multiple sessions (1692–1707) — carrying the town's interests sixty miles by horseback to Hartford. Grew the family estate to £661, more than four times his father's. Addressed as "Mr." — a title reserved for men of high standing.

First Betts to live his entire life in Norwalk — born, married, and buried there. In 1709, the town granted Thomas, his brother John, and two partners the right to dam a creek and build a grist mill, on the condition they grind all the town's grain. The Betts family also operated a fulling mill nearby — processing wool cloth — and the area became known as Betts Brook. Expanded into Canaan Parish (later New Canaan).

Born the year his grandfather Thomas II died — one Thomas leaving, another arriving. Married into the prominent Benedict family. The quietest of the four Thomases — he held no recorded public office, but farmed, attended meeting, and raised six children through the French & Indian War and the gathering storm of revolution. Survived the devastating British burning of Norwalk in July 1779, when Tryon's forces destroyed eighty homes, two churches, and nearly everything the town had built. Died in a free United States.

Enlisted in the Continental Army in March 1780, at nineteen, after watching his hometown burn the summer before. Served in the 3rd Connecticut Regiment under Colonel Samuel Blachley Webb. Rose from private to corporal to sergeant through three years of active duty. Marched four hundred miles to Virginia with Washington's army and fought in the night assault on Redoubt 10 at the Siege of Yorktown — October 14, 1781 — under Lt. Col. Alexander Hamilton. Bayonets only, muskets unloaded, on a moonless night. Wounded in the attack. Cornwallis surrendered five days later. His neighbors called him "Captain Betts" after the war — a title of respect, not rank, that stuck for two centuries. In 2024, the Norwalk DAR placed a corrected marker at his grave: "Sgt. Hezekiah Betts." Twelve children, two became ministers.

Born in Norwalk to Hezekiah and Grace. A restless inventor who worked across steam power, printing, steelmaking, and papermaking. Built a steam engine and launched a steamboat on the Norwalk River — the engine exploded at Oyster Shell Point. Moved on. Patented a duplex printing method in 1838 — printing both sides of a continuous roll — that contributed to the development of the rotary press. Developed early steelmaking processes and a method for making paper from straw. Moved to Troy, New York, where his son Edgar was building a career in the collar industry. Died there at eighty-six — the man who turned the Betts family from the soil to the laboratory.

Left Norwalk at fourteen for Troy, New York, and built a career in America's collar manufacturing capital. Rose through Earl & Wilson, the company that made the Arrow brand. Married Harriet Louisa Gardner, whose father Jefferson Gardner pioneered the collar industry and first applied sewing machines to collar production. Together they raised their family at Elm Mount in Lansingburgh, served on the school board, and built Troy's First Church of Christ, Scientist. After Edgar's death in 1908, Harriet — then sixty-two — purchased a bankrupt sawmill in the North Carolina mountains and founded the Laurel River Logging Company. Their eldest son Anson would invent a process still used worldwide.

The firstborn, named for his mother's dead brother. Yale Class of 1897 (Sheffield Scientific School, Sigma Xi), Columbia MA in Chemistry 1898. Invented the Betts electrolytic process for refining lead — patented 1901 — a landmark in industrial metallurgy still in use worldwide and still in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Developed zinc extraction processes. Published Lead Refining by Electrolysis (1908), translated into German. Managed the Laurel River Logging Company in Madison County, North Carolina — a company town of 1,200 workers his mother financed — then operated a manganese mine in Massachusetts during WWII. Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Married Hattie Alice Ramsey in 1918 — a North Carolina woman who followed his restless career across four states and raised seven children along the way. Died in Northampton, Massachusetts, at ninety-nine — ten weeks short of his hundredth birthday.

Born on Armistice Day — November 11, 1921 — in Hot Springs, North Carolina, at the logging operation his father managed. A boy from the mountains who had never been to sea, assigned to a warship and sent to hunt submarines in the North Atlantic. Served aboard the USS MacKenzie (DD-614), a Gleaves-class destroyer. On May 16, 1943, at 3:50 in the morning, the MacKenzie dropped fifteen depth charges and sank the German submarine U-182 — all sixty-one men aboard killed. Two months later: Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily, landing support at Scoglitti. Then months at Anzio under sustained threat — shore batteries, dive bombers, glide bombs, E-boats, midget submarines. Then Operation Dragoon, the invasion of Southern France. Then bombardment of the Franco-Italian border and blockade of Genoa. Four battle stars. Two years of continuous combat. All four Betts brothers served in the Navy. He came home, married Gloria May Morton, and had one son — born deaf. Gloria passed in 1975 while Wayne Sr. was still a young man. The distance between a hearing father and a Deaf son, and the loss of the woman who bridged them, meant the stories of the family never carried forward. The Betts name continued. The Betts story went quiet.

Born deaf in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Raised in a hearing household where the story of the Betts family was never told — to him, the name was simply the name he carried, and it went no further back than his father's. Attended the Austine School for the Deaf in Vermont, then NTID at RIT in the printing trades. Spent more than twenty years as a printer — an unwitting heir to Henry Betts, who contributed to the invention of the rotary press four generations prior. When the industry gave way to the digital age, he turned his devotion entirely to family. Settled in Rochester, New York.