By Chuck Sanders, vice dean of the School of Medicine Basic Sciences and professor of biochemistry
Joseph Lee Heywood was acquainted with suffering. Having grown up on the New Hampshire/Massachusetts border, as a young man he made his way west to Iowa in search of opportunity. However, before things could really take off, the Civil War came along and in 1862 he volunteered to serve in the 127th Illinois Infantry. The 127th fought under the direction of General William Tecumseh Sherman in a number of bloody engagements including the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, all leading up to the decisive and exceedingly complicated Battle of Vicksburg.
While he emerged from this campaign in 1863 mostly unscathed, he then succumbed to the number one killer of the Civil War—diarrheal disease. After a year of serious recurrent illness he was discharged. Finally recovering, he then re-enlisted and finished out the war serving as an aid in a Union military hospital in Nashville. Afterward, he made his way to Minnesota, settling in Northfield, a small town 45 miles south of Minneapolis.
There was something about Heywood that led people to like and trust him, and he advanced to a position as an officer in the First National Bank of Northfield. On the side, he also served as the treasurer of both the town and the new Carleton College. Heywood also met and (in 1869) married a woman, Martha Ann Buffum, who had been born in Massachusetts just 10 miles from his own birthplace. Their union produced a daughter, Lizzie, named after Martha’s best friend, Liz Adams. When Martha fell gravely ill in 1872, she asked Heywood and Ms. Adams to marry after her death so Liz could take care of Lizzie. And that’s what happened.
On Sept. 7, 1876, the eight members of the Missouri-based James-Younger gang, which included Frank and Jesse James and Cole Younger, visited Northfield. The gang had Civil War ties as bushwhackers: pro-slavery guerrillas who terrorized pro-Union anti-slavery communities in Kansas and Missouri. Frank and Cole had fought with William Quantrill’s paramilitary outfit and had participated in its raid of Lawrence, Kansas, that included both the burning of the town and the massacre of 200 civilians—including children—one of the most notorious atrocities of the war. After the war, the Cole-Younger gang carried out a series of bank and train robberies in the years leading up to their Northfield visit.
On Sept. 7, Heywood was serving as acting cashier at the bank, responsible for overseeing access to essentially the entire wealth of the town of Northfield—$15,000, which resided in a safe located in its vault. In those days, there was no bank insurance such that if a bank lost its money, it was gone for good. The door of vault was open and the safe was closed but unlocked.
Upon entering Northfield, three gang members manned the bridge over the Cannon River, guarding their planned escape route; two stationed themselves in the town square outside of the bank; and the other three—led by Frank James—entered the bank.
Frank had robbed enough banks to know that it was the cashier who had access to the big money. Frank was immediately annoyed when neither Heywood nor the other two bank employees would admit to being the cashier. Heywood eventually acknowledged that he was the acting cashier, and patiently explained that the official cashier was out of town and that, in any case, he couldn’t possibly provide access to the money in the safe because it was on a timer and could only be opened at certain times. A total fabrication.
One of the gang members decided to take matters into his own hands and headed into vault to check out the safe. Heywood sprang into action and attempted to lock the robber in the vault and yelling “Murder! Murder!” This led Frank to whack him in the head with the butt of his pistol, knocking Heywood unconscious.
By now, the townfolk outside of the bank had figured out that something was amiss and were mobilizing against the gang. A key player was Henry Wheeler, a University of Michigan medical student at home on break. A gunfight ensued, with two of the gang members and one of their horses being shot dead, along with an unfortunate Swedish immigrant, Nicholas Gustavson, who was caught in the crossfire. In the bank, Frank and his companions gave up hope of accessing the money in the safe and decided to make a getaway. Meanwhile, Heywood had returned to consciousness and stood, wobbling. Before heading out the door, Frank, now thoroughly pissed off, turned and shot him through the head.
The six remaining members of the Cole-Younger gang all suffered gunshot wounds but made it out of Northfield alive and under pursuit. The Youngers were overtaken by justice: one gang member was shot and killed by the posse, with the others being arrested and serving long prison terms. Frank and Jesse broke off from the others and escaped to Missouri. Jesse later died a violent death, but Frank eventually attempted to live a more-or-less respectable life till he died in 1915, somehow escaping reckoning.
Heywood’s quick thinking and bravery is credited with saving the town of Northfield from financial ruin, creating enough delay to give the town time to act before the robbery could be executed. Banks from across the northern USA raised funds for Liz and little Lizzie, providing them with the then-impressive sum of $12,000. Lizzie eventually graduated from Carleton College and lived until 1947. Carleton College became one of America’s premier liberal arts colleges (and alma mater of our own Jennifer Pietenpol and former Protein Society President James Bowie). Northfield also soon become home to another outstanding school, St. Olaf College, founded by Norwegian immigrants. Today, Northfield remains prosperous and is one of America’s great college towns.
For those of us who, like me, are worried that common decency seems to be increasingly devalued, I hope that the quiet heroism of Joseph Heywood will give us all hope that competence and deeply rooted, everyday virtue will eventually take the day.
Epilogue
On Sept. 10, 2016, a baby was home-birthed in a little apartment located on the 2nd floor (above the olive oil store) of the building that once housed the First National Bank of Northfield. Just outside, in the town square, the annual “Jesse James Days Festival” was ongoing, complete with a noisy reenactment of the Northfield raid. The child was given the name Levi Heywood Sanders.
Acknowlegements: The photo of Joseph Heywood is from the Northfield Historical Society, located next the olive oil shop in the old bank building on Bridge Street at the Northfield town square.