He had a bright future ahead of him. Apprenticed to a master cabinetmaker in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania while still in his late teens or early twenties, he was on track to become a highly skilled craftsman—had his nation not devolved into disunion and civil war.

But it did, forcing him to make a choice—whether to do nothing, sitting on the sidelines, hoping his nation’s leaders would come to their senses and work together as members of one nation, indivisible, or to join the fight to preserve America’s Union by enlisting with one of the hundreds of volunteer regiments springing up across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

He was Jonathan Heller—and he chose the latter, more courageous and patriotic path.

Formative Years

Born in Pennsylvania circa 1839, Jonathan Heller was a son of William Heller (1809-1873), a native of Northampton County, Pennsylvania who had become a Lehigh County laborer, and Sarah (Oertel/Ortel) Heller (1810-1883). Raised with his siblings in Upper Macungie Township in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, Jonathan was a brother of Caroline Heller (1838-1893), who was born on 23 March 1838 and baptized that same year, and who later wed Edmund Keck in 1856; William, who was born circa 1842; Henry, who was born circa 1845; Elizabeth, who was born circa 1846; and Nathan (1848-1854), who was born on 15 October 1848, but passed away on 22 April 1854.

By 1860, however, Jonathan Heller had moved out of his family’s home and into the Salisbury Township home of Jonas Mink and his wife, and was employed as an apprentice cabinetmaker to Mink, who had achieved master craftsman status as a cabinetmaker, carpenter and undertaker who engaged in the design and manufacture of coffins at a time when American ideas about dying, death and mourning customs were undergoing significant transformation. According to Allentown’s Morning Call newspaper, “Mink had a reputation as a cabinetmaker capable of constructing coffins of clear lumber ‘whom people sought out at time of death for the quality of his workmanship and because he was more considerate of the family’s feelings.'”

In those days instead of scientific preservation the body was washed and dressed by friends, the grave was dug and a simple ceremony followed at the churchyard.

American Civil War

In a cruel twist of fate, Jonathan Heller embarked on his new path in life just as the United States was facing the Secession Crisis of 1860-1861. Beginning in late 1860, with the secession of South Carolina on 20 December, the crisis devolved into a significant period of disunion as “eleven of the fifteen slaveholding states in the U.S. South declared secession from the Union” in order “to form a new, proslavery nation, the Confederate States of America (CSA),” according to historians Dean Grodzins and David Moss. “The secession crisis involved both the mass rejection of a lawful electoral outcome and a large-scale turn to violence to resolve political differences.”

As those state secessions tore the nation apart, piece by piece, the United States descended into the darkness of civil war in April 1861—a war that would ultimately claim the lives of roughly seven hundred and fifty thousand soldiers, according to historian J. David Hacker.

The traditional estimate has … been quoted for the last hundred years or more. If you go with that total for a minute—620,000—the number of men dying in the Civil War is more than in all other American wars from the American Revolution through the Korean War combined. And consider that the American population was about 31 million people, about one-tenth the size it is today. If the war were fought today, the number of deaths would total 6.2 million.

Using U.S. Census data compiled from the enumerations completed in 1860 and 1870, Hacker analyzed the number of men who disappeared from federal census records during that decade, enabling him to revise the number of soldiers’ deaths upward from the long-cited figure of 620,000 to the estimated total of 750,000 that is often quoted today, but also noted that that death toll may have been even higher, reaching a staggering 850,000.

Enlistment and Service to the Nation

Like many of his friends and neighbors across Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, Jonathan Heller became one of the early responders to President Abraham Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand volunteers “to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress wrongs already long enough endured,” when he enlisted in the Union Army.

Following his enrollment in Allentown, Lehigh County on 4 September 1861, he officially mustered in for duty at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg, Dauphin County on 18 September 1861 as a private with Company G of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. a brand new regiment that had just been formed on 5 August.

Military records at the time described him as a twenty-two-year-old carpenter and resident of Lehigh County who was five feet, eight inches tall with dark hair, gray eyes and a florid complexion.

* Note: The initial recruitment for members to fill Company G was conducted in Allentown, the hometown of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry’s founder, Colonel Tilghman H. Good. It was led by Captain Charles Mickley, a native of Mickleys near Whitehall Township who had previously been employed as a miller and merchant. Also joining the company’s roster of officers were First Lieutenant John J. Goebel and Second Lieutenant Charles A. Henry.

Following a brief training period in light infantry tactics at Camp Curtin, Private Jonathan Heller and his fellow 47th Pennsylvanians hopped aboard a train at the Harrisburg depot and were transported by rail to Washington, D.C. Stationed roughly two miles from the White House, they pitched tents at “Camp Kalorama” on the Kalorama Heights near Georgetown beginning 21 September.

On 22 September, Henry D. Wharton, a musician with the regiment’s C Company, penned the following update to his hometown newspaper, the Sunbury American:

After a tedious ride we have, at last, safely arrived at the City of ‘magnificent distances.’ We left Harrisburg on Friday last at 1 o’clock A.M. and reached this camp yesterday (Saturday) at 4 P.M., as tired and worn out a sett [sic] of mortals as can possibly exist. On arriving at Washington we were marched to the ‘Soldiers Retreat,’ a building purposely erected for the benefit of the soldier, where every comfort is extended to him and the wants of the ‘inner man’ supplied.

After partaking of refreshments we were ordered into line and marched, about three miles, to this camp. So tired were the men, that on marching out, some gave out, and had to leave the ranks, but J. Boulton Young, our ‘little Zouave,’ stood it bravely, and acted like a veteran. So small a drummer is scarcely seen in the army, and on the march through Washington he was twice the recipient of three cheers.

We were reviewed by Gen. McClellan yesterday [21 September 1861] without our knowing it. All along the march we noticed a considerable number of officers, both mounted and on foot; the horse of one of the officers was so beautiful that he was noticed by the whole regiment, in fact, so wrapt [sic] up were they in the horse, the rider wasn’t noticed, and the boys were considerably mortified this morning on dis-covering they had missed the sight of, and the neglect of not saluting the soldier next in command to Gen. Scott.

Col. Good, who has command of our regiment, is an excellent man and a splendid soldier. He is a man of very few words, and is continually attending to his duties and the wants of the Regiment.

…. Our Regiment will now be put to hard work; such as drilling and the usual business of camp life, and the boys expect and hope an occasional ‘pop’ at the enemy.

Acclimated somewhat to their new way of life, the soldiers of the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry finally became part of the U.S. Army when they were officially mustered into federal service on 24 September.

Three days later, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were assigned to the 3rd Brigade of Brigadier-General Isaac Stevens, which also included the 33rd, 49th and 79th New York regiments. By that afternoon, they were on the move again.

Ordered to duty on Virginia soil by Brigadier-General Silas Casey, the Mississippi rifle-armed 47th Pennsylvania infantrymen marched behind their regimental band until reaching Camp Lyon, Maryland on the Potomac River’s eastern shore. At 5 p.m., they joined the 46th Pennsylvania in moving double-quick (one hundred and sixty-five steps per minute using thirty-three-inch steps) across the “Chain Bridge” marked on federal maps, and continued on for roughly another mile before being ordered to make camp.

The next morning, they broke camp and moved again. Marching toward Falls Church, Virginia, they arrived at Camp Advance around dusk. There, about two miles from the bridge they had crossed a day earlier, they re-pitched their tents in a deep ravine near a new federal fort under construction (Fort Ethan Allen). They had completed a roughly eight-mile trek, were situated close to the headquarters of Brigadier-General William Farrar Smith (also known as “Baldy”) and were now part of the massive U.S. Army of the Potomac (“Mr. Lincoln’s Army”). Under Smith’s leadership, their regiment and brigade would help to defend the nation’s capital from the time of their September arrival through late January when the men of the 47th Pennsylvania would be shipped south.

Once again, Company C musician Henry Wharton recapped the regiment’s activities, noting, via his 29 September letter home to the Sunbury American, that the 47th had changed camps three times in three days:

On Friday last we left Camp Kalorama, and the same night encamped about one mile from the Chain Bridge on the opposite side of the Potomac from Washington. The next morning, Saturday, we were ordered to this Camp [Camp Advance near Fort Ethan Allen, Virginia], one and a half miles from the one we occupied the night previous. I should have mentioned that we halted on a high hill (on our march here) at the Chain Bridge, called Camp Lyon, but were immediately ordered on this side of the river. On the route from Kalorama we were for two hours exposed to the hardest rain I ever experienced. Whew, it was a whopper; but the fellows stood it well – not a murmur – and they waited in their wet clothes until nine o’clock at night for their supper. Our Camp adjoins that of the N.Y. 79th (Highlanders.)….

We had not been in this Camp more than six hours before our boys were supplied with twenty rounds of ball and cartridge, and ordered to march and meet the enemy; they were out all night and got back to Camp at nine o’clock this morning, without having a fight. They are now in their tents taking a snooze preparatory to another march this morning…. I don’t know how long the boys will be gone, but the orders are to cook two days’ rations and take it with them in their haversacks….

There was a nice little affair came off at Lavensville [sic, Lewinsville], a few miles from here on Wednesday last; our troops surprised a party of rebels (much larger than our own.) killing ten, took a Major prisoner, and captured a large number of horses, sheep and cattle, besides a large quantity of corn and potatoes, and about ninety six tons of hay. A very nice day’s work. The boys are well, in fact, there is no sickness of any consequence at all in our Regiment….

Sometime during this phase of duty, as part of the 3rd Brigade, the 47th Pennsylvanians were moved to a site they initially christened “Camp Big Chestnut” in reference to the large chestnut tree located within their campsite’s boundaries. The site would eventually become known to the Keystone Staters as “Camp Griffin,” and was located roughly ten miles from Washington, D.C.

On 11 October, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers marched in the Grand Review at Bailey’s Cross Roads. In a mid-October letter home, C Company Captain John Peter Shindel Gobin reported that companies D, A, C, F and I (the 47th Pennsylvania’s right wing) were ordered to picket duty after the regiment’s left-wing companies (B, E, G, H, and K) had been forced to return to camp by Confederate troops. In his letter of 13 October, Henry Wharton described their duties, as well as their new home:

The location of our camp is fine and the scenery would be splendid if the view was not obstructed by heavy thickets of pine and innumerable chesnut [sic] trees. The country around us is excellent for the Rebel scouts to display their bravery; that is, to lurk in the dense woods and pick off one of our unsuspecting pickets. Last night, however, they (the Rebels) calculated wide of their mark; some of the New York 33d boys were out on picket; some fourteen or fifteen shots were exchanged, when our side succeeded in bringing to the dust, (or rather mud,) an officer and two privates of the enemy’s mounted pickets. The officer was shot by a Lieutenant in Company H [?], of the 33d.

Our own boys have seen hard service since we have been on the ‘sacred soil.’ One day and night on picket, next day working on entrenchments at the Fort, (Ethan Allen.) another on guard, next on march and so on continually, but the hardest was on picket from last Thursday morning ‘till Saturday morning – all the time four miles from camp, and both of the nights the rain poured in torrents, so much so that their clothes were completely saturated with the rain. They stood it nobly – not one complaining; but from the size of their haversacks on their return, it is no wonder that they were satisfied and are so eager to go again tomorrow. I heard one of them say ‘there was such nice cabbage, sweet and Irish potatoes, turnips, &c., out where their duty called them, and then there was a likelihood of a Rebel sheep or young porker advancing over our lines and then he could take them as ‘contraband’ and have them for his own use.’ When they were out they saw about a dozen of the Rebel cavalry and would have had a bout with them, had it not been for…unlucky circumstance – one of the men caught the hammer of his rifle in the strap of his knapsack and caused his gun to fire; the Rebels heard the report and scampered in quick time….

On Friday morning, 22 October 1861, the 47th engaged in a divisional review, described by historian Lewis Schmidt as massing “about 10,000 infantry, 1000 cavalry, and twenty pieces of artillery all in one big open field.” In his letter of 17 November, Henry Wharton revealed still more details about life at Camp Griffin:

This morning our brigade was out for inspection; arms, accoutrements [sic], clothing, knapsacks, etc, all were out through a thorough examination, and if I must say it myself, our company stood best, A No. 1, for cleanliness. We have a new commander to our Brigade, Brigadier General Brannen [sic], of the U.S. Army, and if looks are any criterion, I think he is a strict disciplinarian and one who will be as able to get his men out of danger as he is willing to lead them to battle….

The boys have plenty of work to do, such as piquet [sic] duty, standing guard, wood-chopping, police duty and day drill; but then they have the most substantial food; our rations consist of fresh beef (three times a week) pickled pork, pickled beef, smoked pork, fresh bread, daily, which is baked by our own bakers, the Quartermaster having procured portable ovens for that purpose, potatoes, split peas, beans, occasionally molasses and plenty of good coffee, so you see Uncle Sam supplies us plentifully….

A few nights ago our Company was out on piquet [sic]; it was a terrible night, raining very hard the whole night, and what made it worse, the boys had to stand well to their work and dare not leave to look for shelter. Some of them consider they are well paid for their exposure, as they captured two ancient muskets belonging to Secessia. One of them is of English manufacture, and the other has the Virginia militia mark on it. They are both in a dilapidated condition, but the boys hold them in high estimation as they are trophies from the enemy, and besides they were taken from the house of Mrs. Stewart, sister to the rebel Jackson who assassinated the lamented Ellsworth at Alexandria. The honorable lady, Mrs. Stewart, is now a prisoner at Washington and her house is the headquarters of the command of the piquets [sic]….

Since the success of the secret expedition, we have all kinds of rumors in camp. One is that our Brigade will be sent to the relief of Gen. Sherman, in South Carolina. The boys all desire it and the news in the ‘Press’ is correct, that a large force is to be sent there, I think their wish will be gratified….

On 21 November, the 47th participated in a morning divisional headquarters review overseen by the 47th Pennsylvania’s founder, Colonel Tilghman Good, followed by brigade and division drills all afternoon. According to Schmidt, “each man was supplied with ten blank cartridges.” Afterward, “Gen. Smith requested Gen. Brannan to inform Col. Good that the 47th was the best regiment in the whole division.”

As a reward for the regiment’s impressive performance that day—and in preparation for the even bigger adventures and honors that were yet to come, Brigadier-General John Milton Brannan ordered his staff to ensure that brand new Springfield rifles were obtained and distributed to every member of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

1862

Next ordered to move from their Virginia encampment back to Maryland, Private Jonathan Heller and his fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers left Camp Griffin at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, 22 January 1862. Marching through deep mud with their equipment for three miles in order to reach the railroad station at Falls Church, they were then transported by rail to Alexandria, Virginia, where they boarded the steamship City of Richmond and sailed to the Washington Arsenal. While there, they were re-equipped with weapons and ammunition before being marched off for dinner and rest at the Soldiers’ Retreat in Washington, D.C.

The next afternoon, they hopped aboard cars on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and headed for Annapolis, Maryland. Arriving around 10 p.m., they were assigned quarters in barracks at the United States Naval Academy. They then spent that Friday through Monday (24-27 January 1862) loading their equipment and other supplies onto the steamship USS Oriental.

By the afternoon of Monday, 27 January, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers had commenced boarding the Oriental. Ferried to the big steamship by smaller steamers, the enlisted men embarked first, followed by the officers. Then, per the directive of Brigadier-General Brannan, they steamed away for the Deep South at 4 p.m. The 47th Pennsylvanians were headed for Florida which, despite its secession from the United States, remained strategically important to the Union due to the presence of Forts Taylor and Jefferson in Key West and the Dry Tortugas and because Florida was a major of supplier of food and salt for the Confederacy.

The men of Company G and their fellow 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers subsequently arrived in Key West in early February 1862. Once there, they made camp on the beach, re-erecting their Sibley tents, and were then assigned to garrison duties at Fort Taylor. During the weekend of Friday, 14 February, they introduced themselves to Key West residents by parading through the streets of the city. That Sunday, many officers and enlisted members of the regiment attended local church services, where they met and mingled with residents from the area as part of the first of multiple community outreach efforts to build rapport and support for the army’s efforts to preserve the nation’s Union.

Drilling daily in heavy artillery tactics, they also strengthened the fortifications at this federal installation, felled trees and built new roads.

Next ordered to Hilton Head, South Carolina from mid-June through July, they camped near Fort Walker before relocating to the Beaufort District in the U.S. Army’s Department of the South, roughly thirty-five miles away. Frequently assigned to hazardous picket detail north of their main camp, Private Jonathan Heller and other members of the 47th Pennsylvania were put at increased risk from enemy sniper fire when they were sent out on those special teams. According to historian Samuel P. Bates, during this phase of their service, the men of the 47th “received the highest commendation from Generals Hunter and Brannan” for their “attention to duty, discipline and soldierly bearing.”

Detachments from the regiment were also assigned to the Expedition to Fenwick Island (9 July) and the Demonstration against Pocotaligo (10 July).

During the second week of July, according to Schmidt, the regiment’s third-in-command—Major William H. Gausler—and F Company’s Captain Henry S. Harte returned home to Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley to resume the 47th Pennsylvania’s recruiting efforts. After arriving in Allentown on 15 July, they quickly re-established an efficient operation, which they maintained through early November 1862. During this time, Major Gausler was able to persuade fifty-four new recruits to join the 47th Pennsylvania while Harte rounded up an additional twelve.

Meanwhile, the remainder of the regiment continued to soldier on, performing picket duty at assigned locations throughout the area they occupied. On 12 September, Colonel Tilghman Good and his adjutant, First Lieutenant Washington H. R. Hangen, issued Regimental Order, No. 207 from the 47th Pennsylvania’s Headquarters in Beaufort, South Carolina:

I. The Colonel commanding desires to call the attention of all officers and men in the regiment to the paramount necessity of observing rules for the preservation of health. There is less to be apprehended from battle than disease. The records of all companies in climate like this show many more casualties by the neglect of sanitary post action then [sic] by the skill, ordnance and courage of the enemy. Anxious that the men in my command may be preserved in the full enjoyment of health to the service of the Union. And that only those who can leave behind the proud epitaph of having fallen on the field of battle in the defense of their country shall fail to return to their families and relations at the termination of this war.

II. All the tents will be struck at 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday of each week. The signal for this purpose will be given by the drum major by giving three taps on the drum. Every article of clothing and bedding will be taken out and aired; the flooring and bunks will be thoroughly cleaned. By the same signal at 11 a.m. the tents will be re-erected. On the days the tents are not struck the sides will be raised during the day for the purpose of ventilation.

III. The proper cooking of provisions is a matter of great importance more especially in this climate but have not yet received from a majority of officers of the regiment that attention that should be paid to it.

IV. Thereafter an officer of each company will be detailed by the commander of each company and have their names reported to these headquarters to superintend the cooking of provisions taking care that all food prepared for the soldiers is sufficiently cooked and that the meats are all boiled or seared (not fried). He will also have charge of the dress table and he is held responsible for the cleanliness of the kitchen cooking utensils and the preparation of the meals at the time appointed.

V. The following rules for the taking of meals and regulations in regard to the conducting of the company will be strictly followed. Every soldier will turn his plate, cup, knife and fork into the Quarter Master Sgt who will designate a permanent place or spot for each member of the company and there leave his plate & cup, knife and fork placed at each meal with the soldier’s rations on it. Nor will any soldier be permitted to go to the company kitchen and take away food therefrom.

VI. Until further orders the following times for taking meals will be followed Breakfast at six, dinner at twelve, supper at six. The drum major will beat a designated call fifteen minutes before the specified time which will be the signal to prepare the tables, and at the time specified for the taking of meals he will beat the dinner call. The soldier will be permitted to take his spot at the table before the last call.

VII. Commanders of companies will see that this order is entered in their company order book and that it is read forth with each day on the company parade. All commanding officers of companies will regulate daily their time by the time of this headquarters. They will send their 1st Sergeants to this headquarters daily at 8 a.m. for this purpose.

Great punctuality is enjoined in conforming to the stated hours prescribed by the roll calls, parades, drills, and taking of meals; review of army regulations while attending all roll calls to be suspended by a commissioned officer of the companies, and a Captain to report the alternate to the Colonel or the commanding officer.

At 5 a.m., Commanders of companies are imperatively instructed to have the company quarters washed and policed and secured immediately after breakfast.

At 6 a.m., morning reports of companies request [sic] by the Captains and 1st Sgts and all applications for special privileges of soldiers must be handed to the Adjutant before 8 a.m.

By Command of Col. T. H. Good
W. H. R. Hangen Adj

In addition, First Lieutenant and Regimental Adjutant Hangen clarified the regiment’s schedule as follows:

• Reveille (5:30 a.m.) and Breakfast (6:00 a.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Guard (6:10 a.m. and 6:15 a.m.)
• Surgeon’s Call (6:30 a.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Company Drill (6:45 a.m. and 7:00 a.m.)
• Recall from Company Drill (8:00 a.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Squad Drill (9:00 a.m. and 9:15 a.m.)
• Recall from Squad Drill (10:30 a.m.) and Dinner (12:00 noon)
• Call for Non-commissioned Officers (1:30 p.m.)
• Recall for Non-commissioned Officers (2:30 p.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Squad Drills (3:15 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.)
• Recall from Squad Drill (4:30 p.m.)
• First and Second Calls for Dress Parade (5:10 p.m. and 5:15 p.m.)
• Supper (6:10 p.m.)
• Tattoo (9:00 p.m.) and Taps (9:15 p.m.)

As the one-year anniversary of the 47th Pennsylvania’s departure from the Great Keystone State dawned on 20 September, thoughts turned to home and Divine Providence as Colonel Tilghman Good issued Special Order, No. 60 from the 47th’s Regimental Headquarters in Beaufort, South Carolina:

The Colonel commanding takes great pleasure in complimenting the officers and men of the regiment on the favorable auspices of today.

Just one year ago today, the organization of the regiment was completed to enter into the service of our beloved country, to uphold the same flag under which our forefathers fought, bled, and died, and perpetuate the same free institutions which they handed down to us unimpaired.

It is becoming therefore for us to rejoice on this first anniversary of our regimental history and to show forth devout gratitude to God for this special guardianship over us.

Whilst many other regiments who swelled the ranks of the Union Army even at a later date than the 47th have since been greatly reduced by sickness or almost cut to pieces on the field of battle, we as yet have an entire regiment and have lost but comparatively few out of our ranks.

Certain it is we have never evaded or shrunk from duty or danger, on the contrary, we have been ever anxious and ready to occupy any fort, or assume any position assigned to us in the great battle for the constitution and the Union.

We have braved the danger of land and sea, climate and disease, for our glorious cause, and it is with no ordinary degree of pleasure that the Colonel compliments the officers of the regiment for the faithfulness at their respective posts of duty and their uniform and gentlemanly manner towards one another.

Whilst in numerous other regiments there has been more or less jammings and quarrelling [sic] among the officers who thus have brought reproach upon themselves and their regiments, we have had none of this, and everything has moved along smoothly and harmoniously. We also compliment the men in the ranks for their soldierly bearing, efficiency in drill, and tidy and cleanly appearance, and if at any time it has seemed to be harsh and rigid in discipline, let the men ponder for a moment and they will see for themselves that it has been for their own good.

To the enforcement of law and order and discipline it is due our far fame as a regiment and the reputation we have won throughout the land.

With you he has shared the same trials and encountered the same dangers. We have mutually suffered from the same cold in Virginia and burned by the same southern sun in Florida and South Carolina, and he assures the officers and men of the regiment that as long as the present war continues, and the service of the regiment is required, so long he stands by them through storm and sunshine, sharing the same danger and awaiting the same glory.

Saint John’s Bluff and the Capture of a Confederate Steamer

During a return expedition to Florida beginning 30 September, the 47th joined with the 1st Connecticut Battery, 7th Connecticut Infantry, and part of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry in assaulting Confederate forces at their heavily protected camp at Saint John’s Bluff, overlooking the Saint John’s River area. Trekking and skirmishing through roughly twenty-five miles of dense swampland and forests, after disembarking from ships at Mayport Mills on 1 October, the 47th captured artillery and ammunition stores (on 3 October) that had been abandoned by Confederate forces during the bluff’s bombardment by Union gunboats.

The capture of Saint John’s Bluff followed a string of U.S. Army and Navy successes which enabled the Union to gain control over key southern towns and transportation hubs. In November 1861, the Union’s South Atlantic Blockading Squadron had established an operations base at Port Royal, South Carolina, facilitating Union expeditions to Georgia and Florida, during which U.S. troops were able to take possession of Fort Clinch and Fernandina, Florida (3-4 March 1862), secure the surrender of Fort Marion and Saint Augustine (11 March) and establish a Union Navy base at Mayport Mills (mid-March).

That summer, Brigadier-General Joseph Finnegan, commanding officer of the Confederate States of America’s Department of Middle and Eastern Florida, ordered the placement of earthworks-fortified gun batteries atop Saint John’s Bluff and at Yellow Bluff nearby. Confederate leaders hoped to disable the Union’s naval and ground force operations at and beyond Mayport Mills with as many as eighteen cannon, including three eight-inch siege howitzers and eight-inch smoothbores and Columbiads (two of each).

After the U.S. gunboats Uncas and Patroon exchanged shell fire with the Confederate battery at Saint John’s Bluff on 11 September, Rebel troops were initially driven away, but then returned to the bluff. When a second, larger Union gunboat flotilla tried and failed again six days later to shake the Confederates loose, Union military leaders ordered an army operation with naval support.

Backed by other U.S. gunboats that were armed with twelve-pound boat howitzers, the fifteen hundred-strong Union Army force of Brigadier-General Brannan moved up the Saint John’s River and further inland along the Pablo and Mt. Pleasant Creeks on 1 October 1862 before disembarking and marching for Saint John’s Bluff. When the 47th Pennsylvanians reached Saint John’s Bluff with their fellow Union brigade members on 3 October 1862, they found the battery abandoned. (Other Union troops discovered that the Yellow Bluff battery was also Rebel free.)

According to Henry Wharton, “On the day following our occupation of these works the guns were dismounted and removed on board the steamer Neptune, together with the shot and shell, and removed to Hilton Head. The powder was all used in destroying the batteries.”

Meanwhile, that same weekend (Friday and Saturday, 3-4 October 1862), the expedition’s commanding officer, Brigadier-General Brannan, who was quartered on board the Ben Deford, was busy penning reports to his superiors while also planning the next move of his army. That Saturday, Brannan ordered several officers to have their subordinates prepare rations and ammunition for a new foray that would take them roughly twenty miles upriver to Jacksonville. Among the men selected for this mission were 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers from Company C, Company E and Company K. Companies E and K were subsequently taken on a special mission by E Company Captain Charles Hickman Yard during which they joined with other Union troops in the capture of the Governor Milton, a Confederate steamer that was docked near Hawkinsville, Florida.

Integration of the Regiment

On 5 and 15 October 1862, the 47th Pennsylvania made history as it became an integrated regiment, adding to its muster rolls several Black men who had escaped chattel enslavement from plantations near Beaufort, South Carolina. Among the formerly enslaved men who enlisted at this time were Bristor Gethers, Abraham Jassum and Edward Jassum.

Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina

From 21-23 October 1862, under the brigade and regimental commands of Colonel T. H. Good and Lieutenant-Colonel George W. Alexander, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers engaged the heavily protected Confederate forces in and around Pocotaligo, South Carolina—including at Frampton’s Plantation and the Pocotaligo Bridge—a key piece of southern railroad infrastructure that Union leaders wanted destroyed in order to disrupt the flow of Confederate troops and supplies in the region.

Harried by snipers en route to the Pocotaligo Bridge, they met resistance from an entrenched, heavily fortified Confederate battery which opened fire on the Union troops as they entered an open cotton field. Those headed toward higher ground at the Frampton Plantation fared no better as they encountered artillery and infantry fire from the surrounding forests. The Union soldiers grappled with Confederates where they found them, pursuing the Rebels for four miles as they retreated to the bridge. There, the 47th relieved the 7th Connecticut. But the enemy was just too well armed. After two hours of intense fighting in an attempt to take the ravine and bridge, depleted ammunition forced the 47th to withdraw to Mackay’s Point.

Losses for the 47th Pennsylvania were significant. Two officers and eighteen enlisted men died; an additional two officers and one hundred and fourteen enlisted men were wounded.

Assistant Regimental Surgeon Jacob Henry Scheetz, M.D., who subsequently cared for the fallen 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers at the U.S. Army’s General Hospital at Hilton Head, documented that one of those cut down that day was G Company’s Captain Charles Mickley. A notation by Dr. Scheetz in the U.S. Army’s Register of Deaths of Volunteers certified that Captain Mickley had been “killed in action” at “Frampton SC” (the Frampton Plantation)—details that were expanded upon in a 1987 article by Frank Whelan for Allentown’s Morning Call newspaper:

It was a venture designed to cut a railroad linking Charleston and Savannah, Ga. But poor planning by the overall Union commander, a Gen. Ormsby MacKnight Mitchel, seemed to doom it to failure from the start. The officers in charge of the brigades expected to meet 10,000 armed Southern troops when they landed.

Yet the men of the 47th knew none of this…. Outside of a farm called Frampton Plantation, near Pocotaligo, [Captain Mickley] found himself face to face with hot Rebel fire. As shell and canister and grapeshot raked the line, the bold Mickley charged forward into what commanding officer Tilghman Good called ‘a perfect matting of vines and brush . . . almost impossible to get through.’ Less than 24 hours after he penned [a] letter home, Charles Mickley was lying dead on the first battlefield of his life.

Following the 47th Pennsylvania’s return to Hilton Head on 23 October 1862, the regiment’s surviving members recuperated from the physical and emotional battering they had experienced and then gradually resumed their normal duties. In short order, several members of the regiment were called upon to serve as the honor guard for the funeral of Major-General Ormsby M. Mitchel. (Commander of the U.S. Army’s 10th Corps and Department of the South, Mitchel succumbed to yellow fever on 30 October 1862.)

Der Lecha Caunty Patriot, an Allentown newspaper published in German, reported a November 1862 edition of the publication that Captain Mickley had suffered a fatal head wound on “the railway between Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia,” and that his remains were returned home to Pennsylvania for interment in Allentown’s Union-West End Cemetery—a process that involved embalming the captain’s corpse, a relatively new method of preparing human remains for long-distance transportation, but an option that was still not available to many families of lower-ranking members of the regiment due to its cost, which is why so many 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers still rest in graves so far from home.

Having been ordered back to Key West on 15 November 1862, much of 1863 would be spent garrisoning federal installations in Florida as part of the 10th Corps, U.S. Department of the South. Companies A, B, C, E, G, and I would once again garrison Fort Taylor in Key West, but this time, the men from Companies D, F, H, and K would garrison Fort Jefferson, the Union’s remote outpost in the Dry Tortugas off the southern coast of Florida.

Packing their belongings at their Beaufort, South Carolina encampment and loading equipment onto the U.S. Steamer Cosmopolitan, the officers and enlisted members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry sailed toward the mouth of the Broad River on 15 December 1862, and anchored briefly at Port Royal Harbor in order to allow the regiment’s medical director, Elisha W. Baily, M.D. and wounded, but medically stable members of the regiment to rejoin the regiment.

At 5 p.m. that same evening, the regiment resumed its voyage to Florida, during what was later described by several 47th Pennsylvanians as a treacherous and nerve-wracking trip. According to Schmidt, the ship’s captain “steered a course along the coast of Florida for most of the voyage,” which made the voyage more precarious “because of all the reefs.” On 16 December “the second night, the ship was jarred as it ran aground on one during a storm, but broke free, and finally steered a course further from shore, out in the Gulf Stream.”

In a letter penned to the Sunbury American on 21 December, Henry Wharton provided the following details about that trip:

On the passage down, we ran along almost the whole coast of Florida. Rather a dangerous ground, and the reefs are no playthings. We were jarred considerably by running on one, and not liking the sensation our course was altered for the Gulf Stream. We had heavy sea all the time. I had often heard of ‘waves as big as a house,’ and thought it was a sailor’s yarn, but I have seen ‘em and am perfectly satisfied; so now, not having a nautical turn of mind, I prefer our movements being done on terra firma, and leave old neptune to those who have more desire for his better acquaintance. A nearer chance of a shipwreck never took place than ours, and it was only through Providence that we were saved. The Cosmopolitan is a good river boat, but to send her to sea, loadened [sic, loaded] with U.S. troops is a shame, and looks as though those in authority wish to get clear of soldiers in another way than that of battle. There was some sea sickness on our passage; several of the boys ‘casting up their accounts’ on the wrong side of the ledger.

According to Corporal George Nichols of Company E, “When we got to Key West the Steamer had Six foot of water in her hole [sic]. Waves Mountain High and nothing but an old river Steamer. With Eleven hundred Men on I looked for her to go to the Bottom Every Minute.”

Although the Cosmopolitan arrived at the Key West Harbor on Thursday, 18 December, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers did not set foot on Florida soil until noon the next day. The men from Companies C and I were immediately marched to Fort Taylor, where they were placed under the command of Major William Gausler, the regiment’s third-in-command. The men from Companies B and E were assigned to the older barracks that had been erected by the United States Army and were placed under the command of B Company Captain Emanuel P. Rhoads, while the men from Companies A and G were placed under the command of A Company Captain Richard A. Graeffe, and stationed at newer facilities known as the “Lighthouse Barracks” on “Lighthouse Key.”

On Saturday, 21 December, Lieutenant-Colonel G. W. Alexander, the regiment’s second-in-command, sailed away aboard the Cosmopolitan with the men from the regiment’s remaining companies—Companies D, F, H, and K—and headed south to Fort Jefferson, where they also then assumed garrison duties. According to Henry Wharton:

We landed here on last Thursday at noon, and immediately marched to quarters. Company I. and C., in Fort Taylor, E. and B. in the old Barracks, and A. and G. in the new Barracks. Lieut. Col. Alexander, with the other four companies proceeded to Tortugas, Col. Good having command of all the forces in and around Key West. Our regiment relieves the 90th Regiment N.Y.S. Vols. Col. Joseph Morgan, who will proceed to Hilton Head to report to the General commanding. His actions have been severely criticized by the people, but, as it is in bad taste to say anything against ones [sic, one’s] superiors, I merely mention, judging from the expression of the citizens, they were very glad of the return of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers….

Key West has improved very little since we left last June, but there is one improvement for which the 90th New York deserve a great deal of praise, and that is the beautifying of the ‘home’ of dec’d. soldiers. A neat and strong wall of stone encloses the yard, the ground is laid off in squares, all the graves are flat and are nicely put in proper shape by boards eight or ten inches high on the ends sides, covered with white sand, while a head and foot board, with the full name, company and regiment, marks the last resting place of the patriot who sacrificed himself for his country….

1863

Following the death of Captain Mickley, First Lieutenant John Goebel stepped in to fill his company’s leadership void. Upon re-enlistment at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas on 2 January 1863, he was promoted to the rank of captain; he then returned to Fort Taylor to take command of Company G. On 19 January 1863, Private Reily M. Fornwald was promoted to the rank of corporal.

Life for the men then went on, their hours taken up by training, drilling and inspections that were scheduled regularly to keep them in a perpetual state of readiness for anything that the Confederate Army or Navy could throw at them.

Additional Duties: Diminishing Florida’s Role as the “Supplier of the Confederacy”

On top of the strategic role played by the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers in preventing foreign powers from assisting the Confederate Army and Navy in gaining control over federal forts in the Deep South, Private Jonathan Heller and other members of their regiment would also be called upon to play an ongoing role in weakening Florida’s abilities to supply and transport food and troops throughout the area held by the Confederate States of America.

Prior to intervention by Union Army and Navy forces, the owners of plantations and livestock ranches, as well as the operators of small, family farms across Florida, had been able to consistently furnish beef and pork, fish, fruits, and vegetables to Confederate troops stationed throughout the Deep South during the first year of the American Civil War. Large herds of cattle were raised near Fort Myers, for example, while orchard owners in the Saint John’s River area were actively engaged in cultivating large orange groves. (Other types of citrus trees were grown elsewhere in Florida.)

The state was also a major producer of salt, which was used as a preservative for food. As a result, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers and other Union troops across Florida were ordered to capture or destroy salt manufacturing facilities in order to further curtail the enemy’s access to food.

They performed all of these duties and more in conditions that were far more challenging than what many other Union Army units were experiencing up north in the Eastern Theater. The weather was frequently hot and humid as spring turned to summer. Mosquitos and other insects were an ever-present annoyance and serious threat because they often carried tropical diseases, and poisonous scorpions and snakes had a nasty habit of showing up in tents and on marches.

Despite all of these hardships, when members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry were offered the opportunity to re-enlist during the fall and winter of 1863, more than half chose to do so, knowing full well that the fight to preserve America’s Union was not yet over.

1864

In early January 1864, the regiment experienced yet another significant change when it was ordered to expand the Union Army’s reach by sending part of its membership north to retake possession of Fort Myers, a federal installation that had been abandoned in 1858 following the U.S. government’s third war with the Seminole Indians. Per orders issued earlier in 1864 by General D. P. Woodbury, Commanding Officer, U.S. Department of the Gulf, District of Key West and the Tortugas, that the fort be used to facilitate the Union’s Gulf Coast blockade, Captain Richard Graeffe and a group of men from Company A were charged with expanding the military installation and conducting raids on area cattle herds to provide food for the growing Union troop presence across Florida. Graeffe and his men subsequently turned the fort into both their base of operations and a shelter for pro-Union supporters, escaped slaves, Confederate Army deserters, and others fleeing Rebel troops.

Meanwhile, all of the other companies of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry had begun preparing for the regiment’s history-making journey to Louisiana.

Red River Campaign

As winter deepened back home in the Keystone State, the first group of 47th Pennsylvanians—the men from Companies B, C, D, I, and K—sailed for Louisiana aboard the Charles Thomas on 28 February 1864. The second group, which included the men from Companies E, F, G, and H, departed on 1 March. The third, composed of men from Company A, remained in Florida, where it awaited transport. (Company A was then assigned to detached duty in which its members guarded more than two hundred Confederate soldiers during their transfer to a Union prison in New Orleans.)

The first two groups, which included Private Jonathan Heller, disembarked from their ships at Algiers, Louisiana (now part of New Orleans), were transported by train to Brashear City (now Morgan City), and through the Bayou Teche to Franklin by steamship, where they were attached to the Union’s Nineteenth Army Corps in the Army of the Gulf, becoming the only regiment from Pennsylvania to participate in the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign. They then marched north with that army toward Alexandria and Natchitoches, where they made camp before marching on toward Shreveport.

Before they could reach that city, however, they met a large Confederate force near Mansfield, and engaged in two days of fighting during the Battle of Sabine Crossroads (8 April 1864), which turned into a victory for Confederate troops, and the Battle of Pleasant Hill (9 April), which was a Union victory. Ordered to regroup with other Army of the Gulf troops near Grand Ecore, the 47th Pennsylvania remained there until 22 April, when it was ordered to head for Alexandria, Louisiana.

The next day, the regiment helped to defeat Confederate troops in the Battle of Cane River near Monett’s Ferry, crossed the Cane River with the Army of the Gulf, and continued its march until reaching that city, where its infantrymen assumed duties as part of the Union’s occupying force assembled there.

From late April through mid-May, the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers were assigned to help erect “Bailey’s Dam,” a timber structure designed to help Union Navy gunboats travel the fluctuating waters of the Red River. Subsequently ordered to continue their march south, they next engaged in combat with the Confederate Army on 16 May during the Battle of Mansura, just outside of Marksville, which resulted in another Union victory.

Those battles, combined with the long, grueling marches across challenging terrain and the poor quality of water available to them, resulted in multiple members of the 47th Pennsylvania falling ill with various diseases, including Private Jonathan Heller, who became so sick that regimental physicians ordered him to be confined to Union medical facilities that were operating out of Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Hospitalized in early June, he died there from chronic diarrhea on 7 June 1864.

He was laid to rest the next day (8 June) at the Monument Cemetery in Chalmette, St. Bernard Parish (now the Chalmette National Cemetery).

What Happened to Jonathan Heller’s Parents and Siblings?

Still living in Upper Macungie, Lehigh Township in 1870, Jonathan Heller’s parents, William and Sarah Heller, were confirmed to be “empty nesters” by that year’s census taker. His father, William Heller, was employed as a miner, but that dangerous, exhausting work eventually took its toll. He died in Lehigh County on 5 July 1873.

Jonathan Heller’s mother, Sarah (Oertel/Ortel) Heller, reportedly died slightly less than a decade later, passing away in Philadelphia on 11 May 1883.

Jonathan Heller’s sister, Caroline (Heller) Keck, who had begun her own family with Edmund Keck after marrying him at the Jordan Reformed Church in South Whitehall Township on 30 November 1856, died on 13 March 1893.

Researchers for 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers: One Civil War Regiment’s Story are continuing to search for information about Jonathan Heller and his family. If you have family history documents which can help corroborate the details of his life or the lives of his parents or siblings, please contact us. (See our Contact Us page for instructions on how to reach us.)

* To view key documents related to Jonathan Heller and his family, visit our Heller Family Collection.

 

Sources:

1. Bates, Samuel P. History of Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5, vol. 1. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: B. Singerly, State Printer, 1869.
2. Coker, Rachel. “Historian Revises Estimate of Civil War Dead.” Binghamton, New York: Binghamton University, 21 September 2011.
3. “Confederate States of America—Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” in “The Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy.” New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University, retrieved online 24 May 2024.
4. Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. New York, New York: Vintage, Penguin Random House, 6 January 2009.
5. “Florida’s Role in the Civil War,” in Florida Memory. Tallahassee, Florida: State Archives of Florida.
6. Grodzins, Dean and David Moss. “The U.S. Secession Crisis as a Breakdown of Democracy,” in When Democracy Breaks: Studies in Democratic Erosion and Collapse, from Ancient Athens to the Present Day, chapter 3. New York, New York and London, England: Oxford University Press, 15 March 2024.
7. Hagstrom, Dale. “Revising Civil War Death Counts Using Actuarial Methods,” in Contingencies, September-October 2012. Washington, D.C.: American Academy of Actuaries, retrieved online 24 May 2024.
8. Heller, Caroline, in Birth, Baptismal, Marriage, and Death Records of the Jordan Reformed Church, 1838-1893; includes her dates of birth, baptism, marriage, and death, and the names of her parents, William Heller and Sarah Oertel Heller, and her spouse, Edmund Keck). South Whitehall Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania: Jordan Reformed Lutheran Church.
9. Heller, Jonathan, in Burial Records (Monument Cemetery, Chalmette, Louisiana, June 1864). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
10. Heller, Jonathan, in Civil War Veterans’ Card File, 1861-1866 (Co. G, 47th Pennsylvania Infantry). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Archives.
11. Heller, Jonathan, in Registers of Deaths of Volunteer Soldiers (June 1864). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
12. Heller, William (father), Sara, Carolina, William (son), Henry, Elizabeth, and Nathan, in U.S. Census (Upper Macungie Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, 1850). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
13. Heller, William and Sarah, in U.S. Census (Upper Macungie Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, 1870). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
14. Mink, Jonas and Caroline, and Heller, Jonathan, in U.S. Census (Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, 1860). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
15. “Mortuary Gets High Honor” (mention of Jonathan Heller’s employer, cabinetmaker Jonas Mink). Allentown, Pennsylvania: The Morning Call, 27 February 1972.
16. Schmidt, Lewis. A Civil War History of the 47th Regiment of Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers. Allentown, Pennsylvania: Self-published, 1986.
17. “South Carolina Declaration of Secession (1860).” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: National Constitution Center, retrieved online 24 May 2024.
18. “Starb” (report of Captain Charles Mickley’s death). Allentown, Pennsylvania: Der Lecha Caunty Patriot, 5 November 1862.