Mrs. Mary E. Wilson Betts, the author of a single lyric which has
preserved her name, was born at Maysville, Kentucky, in January, 1824.
Miss Wilson was educated in the schools of her native town, and, on
July 10, 1854, she was married to Morgan L. Betts, editor of the
_Detroit Times_. She died at Maysville two months later, or on
September 19, 1854, of congestion of the brain, believed to have been
caused by the great gunpowder explosion near Maysville on August 13,
1854. Mrs. Betts's husband died in the following October. While she
wrote many poems, her brief tribute to Col. William Logan Crittenden,
kinsman of John J. Crittenden, who was a member of Lopez's
filibustering expedition to Cuba, in 1850, has preserved her name for
the present generation. Colonel Crittenden was captured by the Cubans,
shot, and his brains beaten out. Before the shots were fired he was
requested to kneel, but he made his now famous reply: "A Kentuckian
kneels to none except his God, and always dies facing his enemy!"
When, in her far-away Kentucky home, Mrs. Betts learned of
Crittenden's fate, she wrote her tribute to the memory of the gallant
son of Kentucky, which was first printed in the _Maysville Flag_. The
editor introduced the little poem thus: "The lines which follow are
from one of Kentucky's most gifted daughters of song. Upon gentler
themes the tones of her lyre have oft been heard to breathe their
music. To sing to the warrior, its cords have ne'er been strung till
now; the tragic death, and last eloquent words of the gallant
Crittenden, have caused this tribute to his memory." This poem has
been republished many times and in various forms. During the
Spanish-American war in 1898 it was often seen in print as being
typical of the courage of the soldiers of this country.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Lopez's Expeditions to Cuba_, by A. C. Quisenberry
(Louisville, 1906); _Kentuckians in History and Literature_, by J.
W. Townsend (New York, 1907).