No one is sure when or where exactly the surname ‘Bettag’ originated. The earliest known ancestor of the present-day Bettags was a man named Johannes Bettag. Johannes was a shepard born about 1676 in France. Because he and his family were shepards they had no land of their own & moved about frequently. Sometime between 1670 and 1680 they came from France into Palatine, an area of Germany west of the Rhine and north of the French border.

Two theories exist about the family of Johannes Bettag; either they were Huguenots (a persecuted minority of French Protestants) from near Calais, France, who went by the name Bettacque or Bettac, or Johannes was the son of a blind man named Francois Bethag from Lassee in Normandy, France who was a Catholic who married in Palatine in 1664. In either case the Bettags were not originally from France and they all left it during this period. This group of Bettags may have originated in Scotland under the name of Betagh, but no proof exists today.

Johannes Bettag, the shepard, settled in Dannstadt, Germany and was married about 1703. His wife passed away in 1707 and he quickly remarried to a woman name Anna Maria Benrath. Johannes and Anna had 5 children together, 3 boys and 2 girls. These 3 sons of Johannes were also shepards who traveled to various towns in Germany including Rheingonheim, Harthausen and Dudenhofen. Eventually the descendants of Johannes would marry into landholding families and become landholders themselves.

By the early 1800s parts of Germany were in disarray. The Napoleonic War had taken its toll on the economy and the peoples of Germany. During this time, and throughout the century, many Germans, as well as other Europeans, opted to find a better life for themselves in America. Among these Germans looking for a better life was a man named (Johann) Martin Bettag. Martin Bettag was born in Dudenhofen Germany April 8, 1807, he was the sixth and last child of a shepard and the great-great grandson of the original Johannes Bettag. Martin was married in Dudenhofen to Helena Keller of nearby Harthausen on May 21, 1834. Helena gave birth to 6 children in Dudenhofen; John George, Johann, Sebastian, Anton, Franz Joseph and Anna Catherine. Since Martin Bettag was the youngest child of his family he could not inherit his families land, this along with the current economy in Germany is most likely what convinced him to leave his homeland. According to parish records in Dudenhofen, on October 9, 1845 with his wife Helena and their children, Martin Bettag left his hometown of Dudenhofen and headed for America, more specifically southern Indiana. Around the time of the Bettags' departure from Germany Father Wies of Dudenhofen wrote a letter to the Bishop of the Vincennes Diocese in Indiana stating the names & baptismal dates of the families that were leaving Dudenhofen, or who had already left, and that they were planning to settle near Troy, Indiana. Martin & Helena Bettag and their six children are listed in this letter (see image below). The Bettag's and the other Dudenhofeners boarded the ship "Superb" at Rotterdam, Netherlands and landed at New Orleans, Louisiana, USA on December 26, 1845. The family then traveled up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers until they reached the port of Troy in southern Indiana. From Troy they headed north through the wilderness towards the small community known as Maria Hilf (Mary Help), which is where they would make their home.

Several years prior to Martin Bettags journey to America, a Catholic priest named Joseph Kundek was assigned to be a missionary for the diocese of Vincennes Indiana. Father Kundek was sent to Jasper Indiana in 1838 and from there he explored much of the virgin wilderness that was southern Indiana at that time. He came upon the town of Troy, located on the Ohio River and a gateway to his town of Jasper further north. Father Kundek, having been known as a man of great vision, believed it was his duty to tame this wilderness between Troy and Jasper and bring German Catholics into the area to help do so. To entice people to come join his new communities, which included Ferdinand, Fulda and Maria Hilf, Father Kundek took out advertisements in German newspapers around the country.

The first record of land ownership for Martin Bettag in Indiana is dated December 10, 1850. The date of this land patent is the date that the last payment was made, so the family had most likely been living on the estate since they had first settled the area in 1845. The land sale is for a forty acre plot located in Spencer County between the towns of Maria Hilf and Santa Fe, the area that was then known as Dudenhofen Ecke (corner) since so many families from the town of Dudenhofen had settled there. One of the other settlers in this area was a man named Joseph Bettag who had immigrated to America in 1846, less than one year after Martin Bettag and his family. Joseph was a first cousin of Martin, the son of Kilian Bettag. Like Martin, Joseph was also the youngest male of the family, a possible reason for his emigration. Both Martin and Joseph became farmers, as did most of their children. Two of Joseph Bettag’s sons served the Union in the Civil War, Lothar Bettag and Lorenz Bettag. Around 1870 a schoolhouse, known as Bettag School, was constructed near the town of Santa Claus where Holiday World theme park stands today. Schools in that time were often named for the owner of the land where the school was built, the owner was probably Joseph Bettag or one of his heirs.

Officially the nearby town of Maria Hilf did not receive a parish until 1857, although there was a small log church built there in 1852 it was not recognized by the bishop and therefore was not allotted a priest. When a stone church was constructed much of the sandstone for the structure was quarried from Sebastian Bettag's land. In 1862 a request was sent from the people of Maria Hilf to the U.S. government for a post office to be established in the town, apparently the federal workers did not know what to make of the German name and therefore established the post office as ‘Mariah Hill’, which the town would be known as from then on.

The church records at the Mary Help of Christians Catholic Church in Mariah Hill Indiana are filled with 100’s of Bettag names, the descendants of Martin Bettag and Joseph Bettag, who both lived out the remainder of there lives as farmers in the area of Spencer County. Other Bettags made the trip from Germany to America in the years following. Caspar Bettag immigrated to Evansville, Indiana in 1870. Ludwig Bettag and brother Josef came from Dudenhofen and settled in Iowa in the 1880s.

While most descendants of Martin Bettag and Joseph Bettag eventually moved on to settle in other areas of the United States, several of Martin's children including Anton Bettag and wife Mary Reinacher stayed near Mariah Hill, Indiana. In 1880 Anton and Mary purchased a farm to the north of Mariah Hill, their son George Bettag eventually took over the land which is owned today by George Bettag’s grandson. Many descendants of these immigrant Bettags still reside in and around Spencer County where Martin Bettag and Joseph Bettag made their homes almost 160 years ago.