Sangamon County's first Civil War casualty was a carpenter shot in the thigh 161 years ago
The first Sangamon County resident to die as a result of combat in the Civil War was a carpenter from Springfield. Heaton Hill, about 28, was shot during the siege of Lexington, Mo., on Sept. 18, 1861. He died a month later.
Hill, who had moved to Springfield from Pennsylvania in the early 1850s, was a member of the Yates Dragoons, a cavalry unit formed shortly after the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. The unit presumably was named after Illinois Gov. Richard Yates. Most of the dragoons were Springfield residents, although a sizable minority haled from Quincy.
Illinois Adjutant General Thomas Mather ordered the Yates Dragoons and several other impromptu companies of cavalry to rendezvous at Alton in July.
Mather’s order spelled out how units were to be equipped. In particular, every trooper, from the commander down to the blacksmith, was to provide his own horse, “in the selection of which care should be taken to procure them of as near a uniformity, in color and size, as possible.”
The Yates Dragoons were mustered in as Company F of the 1st Illinois Cavalry Regiment on July 17, and the regiment was deployed to central Missouri. Heaton Hill was listed as a corporal.
In mid-September, the 1st Illinois and other Union detachments under Col. James Mulligan were surrounded by a much larger Confederate force at Lexington, Mo. Mulligan’s command held out for about 10 days, in a siege known as the Battle of the Hemp Bales, but finally was forced to surrender.
Camilla A. Quinn described the aftermath in her 1991 monograph, “Lincoln’s Springfield in the Civil War.”
“Fortunately, the Springfield prisoners were allowed to return home, but before their captors released them, they were required to stand in rows, raise their right hands, and swear not to serve again during the war. When they returned to Springfield a week later as the first Springfield company to have actually fought the Rebels, they were ‘quite the heroes of the day.’ The (Illinois State) Journal noted that ‘wherever you see a knot of people gathered on the street listening eagerly to a recital from some rough-looking man … you may be certain that a brave soldier is fighting the siege over again to an admiring audience.’
Corp. Heaton Hill, however, never made it home. Shot in the thigh Sept. 18, he died in a St. Louis hospital on Oct. 14. Another member of Company F, James Palmer of Quincy, was fatally wounded the same day. Hill and Palmer were the company’s only combat deaths.
According to his Illinois State Register obituary:
“Mr. Hill was one of our most estimable citizens, a carpenter by trade, who came here from Pennsylvania, some ten years ago, and during that period earned a high character for probity, industry and business habits. He was among the first to enlist in the country’s cause, and the general voice of his comrades is, that he was a true man and sturdy soldier.”
Hill is buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery.
Excerpted from SangamonLink.org, online encyclopedia of the Sangamon County Historical Society.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Sangamon County's first Civil War casualty was a 28-year-old carpenter
