28th Infantry

Private Levi Hefner

Company C (the “South Fork Farmers”), 28th Regiment N.C. Troops

The “South Fork Farmers,” named for a local tributary of the Catawba River, organized at Newton on August 13, 1861. The new company moved to Camp Fisher, near High Point, and on September 21 became Company C, 28th Regiment N.C. Troops.

One of the “Farmers,” himself a farmer, was Private Levi Hefner (September 9, 1840-August 20, 1910). The North Carolina Roll of Honor reports that Hefner was wounded in action twice in 1862, at the Battles of Ox Hill (September 1) and Fredericksburg (December 13).

In late 1862 the Army of Northern Virginia, which until then had been free of that disease, suffered a smallpox epidemic. (The source of the infection may have been returning prisoners of war, exchanged after the Maryland Campaign of September 1862). One of the afflicted was Levi Hefner, who was hospitalized at Richmond from January 7 to March 3, 1863, when he returned to duty.

Hefner was one of nearly ninety members of the 28th North Carolina captured at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, May 12, 1864. He was imprisoned at Point Lookout until August 10, when he was transferred to the prison at Elmira, New York. Hefner remained at Elmira until July 7, 1865, when he was released after taking the Oath of Allegiance.

Image: The Catawba Soldier of the Civil War.

Source:
Hahn, The Catawba Soldier of the Civil War, 182; Manarin et. al., North Carolina Troops 8:144; Mast, “North Carolina Casualties”; service record files of Levi Hefner, 28th Regiment N.C. Troops, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers from the State of North Carolina (M270), RG109, NA.