Captain Nathan Hale Monument - Coventry, CT
Posted by: 
neoc1
N 41° 46.058 W 072° 18.385
18T E 723895 N 4627484
An obelisk erected to the memory of Captain Nathan Hale is located in the Nathan Hale town cemetery in Coventry, CT
Waymark Code: WMGJ5A
Location: Connecticut, United States
Date Posted: 03/11/2013
Views: 3
Nathan Hale was born in Coventry, Connecticut on June 6, 1755. He attended Yale University and graduated in 1773. In 1775, he joined a Connecticut militia as a first lieutenant. After the battle of Long Island in, August 1776, Washington retreated to Manhattan. He desperately needed information on British troop movements. On September 8, 1776, Captain Nathan Hale volunteered to go behind enemy lines to obtain the information and report back to General Washington.
He was secretly ferried into Long Island. Subsequently, lower Manhattan was captured by the British and Washington fled to Harlem Heights. Hale was captured in Flushing Bay, Queens and brought to Manhattan where, on September 22, 1776, twenty-one year old Nathan Hale was hanged as a spy. In 1985, he was officially designated the state hero of Connecticut.
A 45' high obelisk consists of a granite base and shaft. The base has four tiered stages leading up to the shaft. Each face of the shaft is decorated with a row of three wreaths under a low gabled pediment. The pediment features the Egyptian symbolic decoration of a disc flanked by long horizontal wings. The obelisk was erected in 1846. The architect was Henry Austin and the contractor was Solomon Willard. Inscriptions appear on each face of the shaft.
The east front face is inscribed:
CAPTAIN
NATHAN HALE,
1776
The north face is inscribed:
Born at Coventry
June 6, 1755
The south face is inscribed:
Died at New York
Sept. 22, 1776
The west face is inscribed with his famous last words:
I only regret
that I have but one life
to lose
for my country.