Jacob Heffelfinger was a Union soldier from Pennsylvania during the Civil War. He recuperated from one of his battlefield wounds at the hospital near Hampton. Hoping to reunite with the men of his unit, he walked from the hospital across the Queen Street bridge to the ruins of St. John’s Church where he found his friends were encamped. It was his first view of St. John’s Church.
A deeply religious man, Heffelfinger returned to Hampton shortly after the war ended. Despite his severe wounds and imprisonment at the notorious Andersonville prison camp, he became a member of the St. John’s community which included many Confederate veterans. He founded a lumber business and married Louisa Whiting. He helped to rebuild the town, including St. John’s Church. Later he helped to build the Parish Hall.
Jacob Heffelfinger took an interest in the history of St. John’s Church. He wrote a history which told the story of the church’s first three hundred years. He searched for the site of the second church, on the east side of the Hampton River, which had been lost for well over a century when he rediscovered it in 1910. He served on the Vestry, as the church treasurer and as the Superintendent of the Sunday school for the last three decades of his life.
Originally published in St. John’s Epistle Lite, April 2015.