William H. Betts, Jr.

In 1860 he was a 21 year old farmer at Tuskegee in Macon County, AL. He enrolled on 19 July 1861 as Captain of the "Southern Stars", later Company B, 13th Alabama Infantry. He was promoted to Major of the regiment on 13 March 1862 (to date from 10 January) and to Lieutenant Colonel on 1 July (from 11 June).

Early in the day on 17 September his regiment was posted in the Sunken Road in the center of the Confederate line. Later in the day he led a fragment of the command in the thin defense on Piper's Farm. His brigade commander said of that:

Subsequent to the action of the forenoon, portions of my brigade encountered the enemy in two desultory engagements, in which they stood before superior numbers and gave a check to their advance. In one of these a small party was placed under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel [W. H.] Betts, and directed to deploy as skirmishers along the crest of a hill upon which the enemy was advancing. They did so with good effect, keeping back a large force by their annoying fire and the apprehension, excited by their boldness, that they were supported by a line in rear.

About 30 men, under Lieutenant-Colonel [W. H.] Betts, Thirteenth Alabama, of my division, remained as supports to my division batteries, under Jones, [R. A.] Hardaway, and Bondurant. The Yankee columns were allowed to come within easy range, when a sudden storm of grape and canister drove them back in confusion. Betts' men must have given them a very hot fire, as Burnside reported that he had met three heavy columns on the hill. It is difficult to imagine how 30 men could so multiply themselves as to appear to the frightened Yankees to be three heavy columns.

He tendered his resignation on Christmas Day 1862 and was discharged due to disability on 14 January 1863.

He was a "notorious gambler who didn't mind shooting people" at Columbus, West Point, and Albany, GA immediately after the war. He was charged with killing a police officer in 1866 in West Point who was trying to arrest him, but acquitted at trial in 1870, and was tried again, in 1870 in Albany, for another murder, but again acquitted. In 1872 he was in Opelika, AL, and ran unsuccessfully for the US Congress as a Republican. In 1880 he was back in Opelika, but afterward went north to New York and Washington. He was a lawyer in Washington, DC at the time of his death, of Bright's Disease, at age 45.

His service from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3. One family reference says he was admitted as a Cadet to the USMA in 1858, but he's not found on the List of Cadets or in the Register. Quotes above from his brigade (Colquitt's) and division (Maj Gen Hill) commanders' after-action reports. Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1860 & 1880, his obituary notice of 27 July 1884, and a somewhat fanciful and dramatic post-mortem piece of the next day, both in the New York Times. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

He married Mary Frances Griffin (1839-1889) in March 1857.

His father graduated from the US Military Academy at West Point in 1835, was a Lieutenant in the First US Artillery wounded in action with Seminoles in Florida in 1837, resigned in 1838, and was a planter in Alabama. He died in 1840 or 1841, soon after his son was born [ref: Cullum's Register]. His mother Elizabeth Gordon Hutchinson (1819-1881) re-married in 1846, planter and slaveholder G W Lanier, who helped raise his step-son.

07/15/1839 in AL

07/26/1884; Alexandria, VA; burial in Shady Grove Community Cemetery, Opelika, AL