Joseph Lee Heywood

Joseph Lee Heywood (August 12, 1837 – September 7, 1876) was the acting cashier at the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, when the James-Younger Gang attempted to rob the bank. At the time, Heywood also held positions as Treasurer for the City of Northfield and Treasurer of Carleton College.

Joseph Lee Heywood was born August 12, 1837, the sixth of seven children born to Benjamin Heywood and Sarah Cutler. He grew up on a farm near Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, which he thought of as his hometown although his birthplace and that of his siblings was recorded as Royalston, Massachusetts, a city just a few miles away. Joseph’s grandfather and great grandfather were both soldiers in the American Revolutionary War.

One brother, John, was a farmer; two brothers, Silas and Charles, enlisted in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

Joseph left home at about 20 years of age, living a year each in Concord and Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He worked as a clerk in a drug store in New Baltimore, Michigan for another year and then according to his military records, he moved to Davenport, Iowa. Joseph enlisted in the army on August 21, 1862 in Chicago and mustered into Captain Adoniram Judson Burroughs’ Company (later designated Company B and known as the “Woodworth Rifles”) of the 127th Illinois Infantry. He had just turned 25 years old, about the age of the average Union recruit.

He received about 2½ months training at Camp Douglas in Chicago, which included some duty guarding Confederate prisoners who were being held to be exchanged for Union prisoners of war from the Battle of Harpers Ferry. The Union guards were treated as if they were prisoners themselves and suffered from many of the same privations as their Confederate prisoners: insufficient food and clothing, poor sanitation and victimization by violent gangs among them. They became restive and burned their quarters three or four times.

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