Here is an example of a soldier's biography. Still a little rough, but I hope provides some idea of format, etc. I would value any suggestions, additions or edits.
William Heyn (1848-1910). First Sergeant, Co. A 7th Cavalry. In valley fight; wounded.
- Interview with Walter Camp, undated (probably October 1908). The Walter Mason Camp Papers (MSS57), box 2 folder 19, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University. Published in: Richard G. Hardorff, Camp, Custer and the Little Bighorn (El Segundo, CA: Upton & Sons, 1997) pp. 60-62.
- Letters to Walter Camp, Nov. 15 and Nov. 24, 1908. ibid., box 1 folder __. Unpublished.
Born in Bremen, Germany, on July 12, 1848, William Heyn immigrated to the United States in 1866, locating initially in Brooklyn, New York, where he worked as a grocery clerk. While in New York City, he enlisted in the army on February 3, 1867. His enlistment record describes him as 5’ 7½” tall, with blue eyes, brown hair and a fair complexion.(1)
After completing his orientation, Heyn was assigned to the Third Cavalry and sent to join the regiment at Fort Union, New Mexico Territory. Arriving with a large number of other recruits on July 13, 1867, he was assigned to Company G, located at Fort Sumner. The following year, Heyn’s company was ordered into the field for three weeks scouting for Indians. Ten days after returning, Company G was again ordered out, this time as part of the Canadian River Expedition sent against Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho. On Christmas Day, 1868, the expedition struck a Comanche village on the North Fork of the Red River.(2)
Following the close of the expedition, Company G was stationed at Fort Union for a year and then sent to Camp Verde, Arizona Territory, for four months. Heyn was promoted to corporal but then later reduced [find dates]. In December 1871, the regiment was transferred to the Department of the Platte. Traveling by steamer, the regiment stopped briefly in San Francisco and then moved upriver to Benicia Barracks, California, where Private Heyn was discharged on February 28, 1872, having completed his five-year enlistment.(3)
Heyn returned to New York City where on April 6, 1872, he signed up for his second enlistment. Ordered to the Seventh Cavalry, he arrived in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, on December 2 and was assigned to Company A, commanded by Captain
Myles Moylan. Four months later, the regiment was ordered to the Department of Dakota, where Heyn participated in the Yellowstone Expedition in 1873 and in the Black Hills Expedition in 1874. He was promoted to corporal on July 1 and then to sergeant three weeks later on July 23, 1873. Heyn became the company’s first sergeant effective Dec. 8, 1873.(4)
At the Little Big Horn, First Sergeant Heyn rode with his company as part of Reno’s battalion. On the skirmish line, he directed the movements of his troop, firing only a few shots himself. At one point, however, the ejector on his carbine jammed and he had to borrow a ramrod from Lieutenant Wallace’s sporting rifle to shove out the shell. His company fell back to the woods where Heyn was shot in the left knee. Sergeants McDermott and Culbertson managed to help him mount up just as they left the timber for higher ground. “The men straggled out and started across the flat without any particular command and no bugle being blown,” Heyn later told Walter Camp, “the officers digging spurs into their horses and every man for himself.” Heyn reached the top of the bluff, despite his horse being shot twice more during the climb. Heyn was placed in the temporary field hospital and his duties fell to Sergeant Fehler.(5)
Heyn was evacuated with the other wounded aboard the steamer
Far West to the post hospital at Fort A. Lincoln. He was back on duty with his company by Sept. 1876 but was transferred the following month to the General Service U. S. Army where he completed his enlistment on April 6, 1877. Heyn re-enlisted in the General Service on that same day and was discharged for the final time on Sept. 2, 1879. He then worked as a clerk in the Adjutant General’s Office for about ten years and then as a clerk at Headquarters of the U.S. Army for about a year and a half. By 1891, Heyn was working as a clerk at the Soldier’s Home in Washington, D.C. He married his wife Sarah about 1909 and died at the Soldier’s Home on June 11, 1910. He was buried there at the U. S. Soldiers Home National Cemetery, in Washington D.C.(6)
Ephriam D. Dickson III
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1. Heyn interview, Camp Papers, BYU. Register of Enlistments, vol. 66 p. 14 (M233 R 33), NA.
2. Regimental Returns, 3rd Cavalry, 1859-67 (microcopy 744 roll 29); 1868-75 (microcopy 744 roll 30). Duane F. Guy, "The Canadian River Expedition of 1868," Panhandle
-Plains Historical Review 48 (1975). William H. Leckie,
The Military Conquest of the Southern Plains (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963). [Check to see if Heyn with Monahan and detachment of Co. G in fight at Apache Springs, June 8-13, 1868.]
3. Regimental Returns, 3rd Cavalry.
4. Register of Enlistments, vol. 74 p. 34 (microcopy 233 roll 39). Kenneth Hammer,
Men With Custer: Biographies of the 7th Cavalry, June 25, 1876 (Hardin, MT: Custer Battlefield Historical & Museum Assoc., 1995) p. 157. John M. Carroll (ed.),
They Rode With Custer: A Biographical Directory of the Men That Rode with General George A. Custer (Mattituck: J. M. Carroll & Co., 1993) p. 118. [Heyn told Camp that he was promoted to corporal on Jan. 1, 1873, however, Hammer, Men With Custer, says July 1, 1873; check 7th Cav. orders]
5. Heyn interview and correspondence, Camp Papers. Sgt. Culbertson testimony, in Ronald H. Nichols (ed.),
Reno Court of Inquiry (Hardin, MT: Custer Battlefield Historical & Museum Association, 1996), p. 370. W. O. Taylor to Walter Camp, Dec. 12, 1909, in Richard G. Hardorff,
On the Little Bighorn With Walter Camp: A Collection of W. M. Camp’s Letters, Notes and Opinions on Custer’s Last Fight (El Segundo, CA: Upton & Sons Pub., 2002) p. 97.
6.
Washington D.C. City Directory, 1891. 1910 Federal Census, Washington D.C. p. 157.
