<P> Another account placed Hale's execution at Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, but there was no evidence to support this claim . </P> <P> Nathan Hale's body has never been found . His family erected an empty grave cenotaph in Nathan Hale Cemetery in South Coventry Historic District, Connecticut . </P> <P> Hale was the great - grandson of John "Reverend Hale" Hale, an important figure in the Salem witch trials of 1692 . Nathan Hale was also the uncle of orator and statesman Edward Everett (the other speaker at Gettysburg) and the grand - uncle of Edward Everett Hale (quoted above), a Unitarian minister, writer, and activist noted for social causes including abolitionism . He was the uncle of Nathan Hale who founded the Boston Daily Advertiser, and helped establish the North American Review . </P> <P> Statues of Nathan Hale are based on idealized archetypes; no contemporaneous portraits of him have been found . Documents and letters reveal Hale was an informed, practical, detail - oriented man who planned ahead . Of his appearance and demeanor, fellow soldier Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick wrote that Nathan Hale had blue eyes, flaxen blond hair, darker eyebrows, and stood slightly taller than average height (of the time), with mental powers of a sedate mind and pious . Bostwick wrote: </P>

American military (the continental army) became an avenue