In 1871, Emy Andrews contracted a surveyor to lay out lots on the westernmost sliver of her land butting against Bettsville's eastern boundary. In total, 82 residential lots were plotted along with a five-acre grove in the middle. In 1882, the village annexed these lots, extending it's eastern boundary from the center of Sullivan Street eastward to include both sides of Monroe Street and the land between Sullivan and Monroe Streets, bordered by Union Street on the north and Seneca Street on the south. It became known as the Andrews Addition, and it was the largest single annex ever made to Bettsville.
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| Birds eye view of Bettsville, looking east |
By 1914, the United States, already
decades deep into an industrial
revolution, had been pulled into World
War I. Many Americans migrated north
to the industrial states to take advantage
of the plentiful job opportunities. South and east of Bettsville, where
glaciers had exposed vast limestone
fields thousands of years earlier, a small stone
quarry near Maple Grove, originally called Linden, began the mining of limestone for road
construction. Then in 1908, founders P.L. Van Alstyne and J.R. Holran turned the business over
to Cleveland businessman Howard P. Eells as collateral payment for a steam shovel. Later, the
name became Dolomite Production Company and then Basic Refractories, Inc. When World
War I cut off imports to the U.S. from Central Europe, Basic began the manufacture of a
substitute for Austrian magnesite, the loss of which threatened to jeopardize the country's steel
production, and thus its war effort. The Company flourished for many decades and employed
as many as 600 people at its pinnacle, making it one of the largest employers in the area and
enticing job seekers to relocate to Bettsville and surrounding communities.
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| The stone quarry in 1910 |
Surveyors noted the peculiar geological anomaly while plotting out Liberty Township:
In the north-eastern part of this township, is a tract of land about three miles in length, and three-fourths of a mile in width, remarkably stony. In some places, the lime-stone rock literally covers the ground. In others, it is not so thickly covered, and tolerable crops are raised. The lime-stone, by being exposed to the weather, becomes white, giving to the land a singular appearance. This tract is the more remarkable, as the county in general, is so very free from any thing of the kind.
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| Holran Stone Company, before its sale to H.P. Eells |
In 1917, my great grandfather William Lampson Semer completed a fifteen year military career that spanned from Key West to New York City to Pensacola, Florida. He was excused from any conscription during World War I because of his large family. William and his wife Nettie, and their seven children relocated to the Bettsville area for job opportunities. William’s older sister, Jane, and her husband, Joseph Dunlap, had moved their
family to nearby Fort Seneca a few years earlier. Joseph and some of his sons had gained employment at the stone quarry, so they were probably instrumental in convincing William and
Nettie to come to the area.
The Semers were natives of Van Wert County, Ohio. William met Nettie Russell, a native of Key West, Florida, during his deployment to Fort Zachary Taylor in Key West. The Russells were one of the original Keys families, the so called "conch families," who migrated from the Bahamas in the 1830s after the United States acquired Florida from Spain. Many of these Bahamian families were descendants of British Loyalists who fled southern states in the aftermath of the American Revolution. William and Nettie were married on Christmas Eve, 1903. My grandmother Marietta was born at Fort Schuyler, Bronx, New York in 1910, the fifth of the Semer children.
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| William Semer family, Fort Totten, Queens, New York, 1914 |
The Semers occupied a house between Bettsville and Maple Grove on what was then known as the Ringle Farm.
They moved into a small brick house situated off County Road 31 at the edge of what I
remember as the Sycamore Woods. I’m told the house they were living in later burned down, and the family moved into another house on the east end of Bettsville. Three more sons were born to William and Nettie during this time, Burl “Gassy” Semer in 1917, Robert “Ray” Semer in 1919, and Russell “Ruck” Semer in 1920.
On a draft registration card, William stated that he was
working at the refractory plant in Maple Grove. Additionally, he was a night foreman at
Kennedy Refractories in Bettsville, where he was considered one of the company’s most
trusted employees. At the time, Kennedy Refractories and Basic Refractories were separate entities essentially carrying out the same operations at separate quarries just a couple miles apart. Basic acquired the Kennedy facility in 1931 and the operations were consolidated, with manufacturing at Maple Grove and a research laboratory at Bettsville. The quarry adjacent to the Bettsville facility was allowed to fill with spring water when the pumps were shut down. It was later donated to the village along with 40 acres of land, where H.P. Eells Park opened in the early 1950s.
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| A view of the old Kennedy facilities from across the swimming quarry |
Grandpa Semer died tragically in October of 1920 from injuries sustained from a dust explosion at the Kennedy facility. In the aftermath of this great tragedy, Nettie was left to care
for and raise 10 children under the age of 16. The local
townspeople pulled together and helped with donations of
food and clothing. The Semer children continued to attend
Bettsville School, and Nettie eventually turned to
government assistance programs to support her family. I remember hearing a story of another family
tragedy about my grandmother’s sister who died at a young
age. As the story goes, Nettie Semer, named after her
mother, fell from a porch and suffered brain damage as a
young girl. After her father's death, the decision was made to institutionalize little Nettie. She passed away at a mental facility in Orient, Ohio in 1926. Sisters Marietta and Hazel helped to raise the younger brothers. The older brothers went to work to assist with the family's needs.
About 1940, my grandparents Vernon and Marietta Bramel purchased three lots #225-227 at the south end of the Andrews Addition on the northwest corner of Seneca and Monroe Streets. Vernon had arrived in town in 1927 at age 17, specifically to work at the quarry, and married Marietta Semer later that year. He and his two younger brothers had been taken to the orphanage in Maumee, Ohio after their mother died near Cincinnati in 1925. He was then farmed out to the Huffords, six miles north of Bettsville, who welcomed him into their family. He went to work in the stone quarry at Maple Grove in 1927 and likely met some of the Semer brothers there.
Vernon and Marietta initially rented a room in what was known as "the hotel," a boarding house near the railroad depot in Bettsville, where their first son was born. Then they rented for $6 per month a two story house next to the railroad tracks south of Seneca Street, where the other four sons were born. That same house was relocated a quarter-mile up the street to the middle lot of their acquisition, and I'm told the total cost of the land, house, and relocation was $900. Grandpa built a kitchen addition along the north side and then added a bathroom in the back. He built a large garage/barn structure in his spare time with cinderblocks he made at Marian Flack's shop, mixing cement and pouring it into molds. The neighborhood kids in the southern half of the Andrews Addition during that generation, the Bramels, Mowerys, Fogels, and others, came to be known as the "ridge rats" due to their proximity to the stony ridge running through the township. They were a close-knit bunch who wore that badge with great pride.
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| Vernon and Marietta (Semer) Bramel, married 1927 |
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| My dad with his big brothers on "the ridge," 1936 |
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| Aunt Sally at the back of the Bramel home on "the ridge" ca. 1945 |
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| Nettie and family, circa 1940 |
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