WORDS of WAR

August Heller was my great-great-great uncle, born sometime around 1840 in Bensheim, Hessen, Germany, to Christian Heller — who was a printer and publisher and my great-great-great grandfather — and Elizabeth Boll, my third-great grandmother. In December 1852, the family immigrated to the U.S., winding up in Philadelphia, where August learned to be a lithographer – a career he put on hold on April 23, 1861, when he enlisted in Company K of the 8th New York Infantry. 

The American Civil War had begun 11 days earlier when Confederate forces fired upon the Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina. August enlisted voluntarily — patriotically — for a two-year period. (Lincoln’s draft was not ordered until March 1863, so we know he could not have been drafted.)

In the Spring of 1862 — halfway through August’s enlistment — Confederate forces commanded by Gen. Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson were chasing Union forces out of Virginia’s Shenadoah Valley, and were drawing close to Washington, D.C. 

The 8th N.Y., in which August was now a corporal, were among the forces called upon to defend the nation’s capital, which they did aggressively. In early June, Jackson began to retreat from the Union forces. 

On June 8, 1862, Union forces commanded by Maj. Gen. Richard S. Ewell attacked Jackson’s troops at Cross Keys, VA. In one charge, Cpl. August Heller was hit in the arm. According to family stories, he told a friend he was not badly wounded, and then was hit again and killed – one of about 1,000 Union and Confederate troops who died in the battle that day.

August was first buried on or near the battlefield at Cross Keys, as was the custom then, but his remains may have been moved later to the Fredericksburg National Cemetery at Fredericksburg, VA, although he is not on the official burial roster there.