Philip Heck: 49th Missouri Infantry Musician
by Bob Brail

            In the middle of the woods, about a half mile from Highway 94, a government-issued headstone from the nineteenth century leans over the grave it marks.  On May 29, 1896, Philip Heck, a veteran of the Civil War, was buried in what is now known as the Roth/Heck Cemetery.  This German immigrant had volunteered his services to his country several times during the war.
   
             The records of the Missouri state archives are somewhat unclear as to the first portion of Heck’s service record, but they certainly show that Philip Heck was an enthusiastic volunteer.  He apparently initially volunteered in July of 1861 as a member of Krekel’s Battalion in the United States Reserve Corps for an enlistment that lasted only a month.  Several months later in March of 1862, he volunteered again, this time as a bugler in the 1st Cavalry Battalion of the Missouri State Militia.  Heck was mustered out at year’s end.    
    
            Philip Heck was not done, though.  In the spring of 1864, President Lincoln asked the governor of Missouri to supply ten additional infantry regiments to the Union cause.  The 49th Missouri Infantry was formed in the summer and early fall of that year in response to Lincoln’s call.  The soldiers who volunteered may have been paid a bounty for enlisting.  Men from Lincoln, Pike, Montgomery, Calloway, Audrain Counties made up most of the regiment.  One company, G, was made up of volunteers from St. Charles County, including Philip Heck, who enlisted on September 9.
    
            Heck was somewhat a rarity as a Civil War soldier because he enlisted as a musician.  At the beginning of the war, War Department regulations allowed each regiment to have a 24-man brass band, but by the last year of the war, regimental bands had given way to brigade bands.  Heck was one of six “musicians” from his regiment who, along with the 49th’s two drummers, would have been part of their 16-person brigade band (brigades were typically made up of four or five regiments).  Heck most likely did not participate as a combatant but, like other Civil War musicians, would have served as a medical assistant during battle.  In camp, the band would have provided entertainment and performed during reviews, parades, and funerals.  Since nearly ten percent (96 men) of the 49th Missouri died of disease while in camp, Heck would have been a busy man.  Four more men were killed in battle.
      
            Heck’s regiment was initially stationed in northeastern Missouri.  In the fall it was sent to Jefferson City to help repel Sterling Price’s last raid into Missouri.  The regiment was stationed at “Minor’s Hill,” now the site of the old state penitentiary, but never encountered the main part of Price’s army.  In February of 1865, Philip Heck went with his regiment to New Orleans and then to Mobile, Alabama, to participate in the assault of the Confederate defenses of Mobile Bay.  Heck’s regiment assaulted and captured Fort Blakely on April 9, as the war was coming to its close.  Most of the regiment returned to St. Louis that summer and was mustered out on August 5.  Heck had served less than one year.    
   
             Philip Heck, who was born in Baden, Germany, on April 17, 1831, probably married before the war.  By 1868 he was living in southern St. Charles County with his wife, Elisabeth (nee Roth), and their three young children, Josephine (age nine), Albert, and Katharine.  The next year another daughter, Philipine, was born.  The 1870 census notes Heck was a bricklayer and that his seventy-six year old mother, Catharine, had joined their household.  The Hecks were living somewhere in the northern area of Hamburg, most likely on rented property.  By 1880 Philip, now a stone mason, and Elisabeth had eight children.
   
             Elisabeth Heck preceded her husband in death on November 28, 1889.  When Philip Heck died nearly seven years later, the federal government placed a Civil War veteran’s headstone on his grave.  Hecks’ children had buried their father next to their mother; they then had their mother’s name engraved on the government marker. (For directions to the Heck gravesite, go to thetntstory.org and click on the “Cemeteries” tab.)
      
            Philip Heck was in his early thirties years when he volunteered several times for the Union army.  About a decade older than the typical Union soldier, Heck may have been motivated patriotism, an enlistment bounty, or both.  Even though he served for less than two years, Heck must have faced death scores of times while doing his duty as a regimental musician.     
    
Sources: 1868 State Census of St. Charles County;  1870 Federal Census of St. Charles County, Missouri; 1880 Federal Census of St. Charles County, Missouri;  Cemeteries of St. Charles County, Missouri;  Civil War Veterans of St. Charles County  (St. Charles County Genealogical Society);  Echoes of Glory: Arms and Equipment of The Union (Time-Life Books);  The Forty-Ninth Missouri Volunteer Infantry (users.chartertn.net/rmumford/coghi49.html);  James River Publications Civil War Website  (www.mosocco.com/missouri.html); Military History of Pike County, Missouri (Clayton Keith); Missouri State Archives (www.sos.mo.gov/archives/soldiers).