     Orville C. Wheelock was a 36-year-old farmer from Michigan who served in the 8th Michigan Infantry. He suffered a leg wound on September 1, 1862, in the Battle of Chantilly that followed the Union defeat at Second Manassas. A downpour happened during the battle making it difficult to discharge rifles and led to intense hand-to-hand fighting. Wheelock was taken to Alexandria and admitted to Lyceum Hospital. He died on September 9th after complications from the amputation of his left leg. He was buried September 10th in the recently created Soldiers Cemetery (now Alexandria National Cemetery). There were only around 300 burials there at the time. He left behind a wife, Anna, and daughter Mary Emma (10). 

     Orville’s family learned that he was wounded in battle on September 10, a day after his death. His sister Julia and wife departed for Alexandria on September 11 hoping that they could aid his recovery in the hospital. They crossed Lake Erie to Cleveland, then travelled by train to Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC. From DC they traveled by boat to Alexandria. They arrived at Alexandria’s waterfront on September 14 and began working their way up King Street searching for him in the city’s many hospitals. By this time, his wife Anna was despondent feeling the search was futile stating that “Oh, his wound is fatal, for he came to me in my dreams only a few nights since, looked worn and pale and haggard, having lost a limb in battle and seemed to say, ‘My work is done, I’m weary and must rest.’” Julia continued the search without Anna. Upon reaching the Lyceum Hospital where Orville died, she received false hope from a soldier that Orville was alive and recuperating.  Upon hearing the good news, Julia rushed to get Anna and asked the soldier to prepare Orville to see his wife. When the two women returned to the Lyceum the same soldier greeted them with a sullen look and news that he was mistaken—Orville had died days ago.

     The party was then taken to a reverend’s house to spend a “sleepless night brooding over our sorrow and shedding the unavailing tear.” The following morning Anna and Julia visited Orville’s grave with two chaplains. Julia described the event as follows:

“Oh! how could we realize, as we stood by that little, narrow, turfless mound, that dear Orville lay there? His poor heart-broken widow threw herself upon his grave and gave vent to her deep grief in sobs and bitter tears. Nearly three hundred brave "boys in white" lay side by side in the same enclosure, with not even a stone to mark the place where they were sleeping, nor a spear of grass growing upon their graves, simply buried out of sight; but each little mound is cherished, oh, how sacredly by some one!..."

One of the chaplains accompanying them also described the moment:

“[E]ever shall I remember the arrival of his wife, who expected to nurse and care for him until he was able to travel. But before she arrived he was buried. With the company of two others I accompanied her to the grave of her husband. For a moment, in silent agony she gazed on that mound; then, as though the burden of grief had completely overwhelmed her nervous and physical powers, she fell prostrate upon the grave; then followed such expressions of indescribable sorrow and suffering as makes one pray that he may never witness such a scene again.”

     They then returned to the Lyceum Hospital to visited the wounded. They also met the kind nurse who cared for Orville in his final moments and prepared him for burial. Anna began her return trip to Michigan on September 18, but Julia remained in Virginia for the rest of the war. She joined the Michigan Relief Association and provided care to wounded Michigan troops, even travelling to battlefields to tend to those wounded like her brother.

    Anna remarried in 1868 to Ezra Hutson and they had son together. She filed for divorce from him in 1881 after learning that he had abandoned a previous wife and never legally separated from her. After being granted a divorce, Anna was recertified to receive Orville’s pension. She died at age 77 on October 4, 1909. His daughter Mary died in 1940.


[Union soldiers on the steps of Lyceum Hospital, Alexandria, Virginia] / [Bowdoin, Taylor & Co., 204 King, cor. Columbus Street, Alexandria, Va. Library of Congress

Lyceum Hospital, Alexandria during the Civil War

ORVILLE C WHEELOCK

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