CHARLES BETTS, whose name is familiarly known throughout the city of Freeport and vicinity, is a native of the Empire State, having been born at Batavia, Genesee County, June 13, 1825. Without the advantages of a collegiate education, he improved his early opportunities for study, and while still a youth entered the law office of Hons. Heman J. Redfield and Benjamin Pringle, who were then associated in partnership, and occupied a high position in the legal profession of New York State. He studied under the instruction of these eminent gentlemen for a time, and afterward became connected with the office of Hons. Isaac A. Verplank and John H. Martindale. The counsel and as-sistance of these distinguished attorneys had great influence in molding his character and educating him up to a high standard of excellence in the profession of his choice, and being honorable, high-minded and faithful, through his inbred moral principles he early gave evidence of his fitness for the high career to which he was subsequently called.

Mr. Betts was esteemed and beloved not more for his genial social qualities and the grace of his person, than for the brilliancy of his talents which began developing at an early age. The writer well remembers that at the greatest political mass meeting ever assembled in the United States, and numbering over 100,000 persons, on the 4th day of October, 1844, at Rochester, N. Y., one of the highly praised speakers on that occasion was the subject of our sketch. He then delivered his maiden speech, which in a marked degree pointed to a distinguished future. Three years later he was admitted to practice in the courts of New York State with the highest honors of his class, at Rochester, in December, 1847. The following year he emigrated to Illinois and located in the city of Freeport, where he has since resided engaged in the practice of his profession, and in which he has uniformly sustained a prominent and honorable position.

In the political campaign of 1852, when quite a young man, Mr. Betts received unsolicited the nomination by the Whig party for Auditor General of Illinois. He also took the stump in behalf of the party in that campaign, in which he rendered valuable service in support of the great principles he entertained. In the great political revolution of the country, in 1858, our subject finding that the principles which had divided the two great parties had become measurably obsolete and suspended by the all-absorbing question of slavery in the Territories, saw the great Whig party swallowed up by a new party, based upon the slavery question. As an honorable, high-minded man, having no selfish political ends to serve, he believed that the success of the party, sectional in its character and based upon the single idea of slavery, would result in civil war and possibly dissolution of the Union. He readily indorsed the sentiments and principles of the lamented Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, and remained the fast friend and able supporter of that great statesman to the hour of his death. Convinced of the vital importance to his country of this issue in the election campaign of 1860, few men in Illinois labored with pen and from rostrum with greater energy, eloquence and power to secure the election of Douglas than did the subject of our sketch. Since that time he has remained an active, energetic, able and eloquent expounder of the Democratic faith, as viewed from the standpoint of Jefferson, Jackson and Douglas.

At the Congressional Convention of the Democratic party in the famed Third Congressional District of Illinois – the E. B. Washburne district of 1870 – Mr. Betts received without solicitation the appointment of standard bearer of his party, and effected a highly commendable result against his Republican antagonist in the district where the candidate of his party two years previous was defeated by 10,000 majority, and reduced that majority nearly one-half, signally demonstrating his deserved popularity.

Mr. Betts, having a thorough contempt for the office-seeker, has uniformly declined public positions which have been tendered him and which he would have filled with honor and ability. Few men laboring in early years with like disadvantages have more signally achieved and deservedly obtained the esteem and confidence of their fellowmen than Hon. Charles Betts. Never in any instance has his ambition, although highly commendable, been known to overreach his judgment or set aside the best interest of his State and county. He has carried his honors modestly, and has built up a record which his descendants will be proud to review in coming years.

Contributed by Carol Parrish from Portraits & Biographical 1888 Stephenson Co IL Pg 322