20th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers.
He was born in Rastadt and died at Ball's Bluff.

He emigrated to the United States in 1853 and was naturalized in 1857.
He was a bookkeeper for a Boston toy store before the War and was also a teacher of the German language at Comer's Commercial College.

Captain Alois Babo, who was the commanding officer of Company G and Second Lieutenant Reinhold Wesselhoeft of Company C attempted to swim across the Potomac River without removing any of their equipment. When they were midstream the Confederates fired at them. Captain Babo was shot and Wesselhoeft tried to save him. Both drowned. Wesselhoeft's body was recovered when it washed ashore thirteen days later. Captain Babo's body was never found.

The National Republican January 11, 1862
For the National Republican
Another of The Victims of Ball's Bluff
The body of the late Lieut. Reinhold Wesselhoeft, Company C, Twentieth Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, who was drowned at The Battle of Ball's Bluff, was on Saturday last interred in the Oak Hill Cemetery, at Georgetown. Lieut. Wesselhoeft was the son of the late Dr. Wesselhoeft of Boston, who was eminent for his literary and scientific abilities and who was exiled from Germany in the Revolution of 1848. Young Wesselhoeft was an officer of merit and a young man of uncommonly fine personal qualities. His fate and that of his friend, Captain Babo, was peculiarly sad. They were attached personal friends, bound to each other by the ties of nativity and associations, by common sacrifices to liberty and common hopes and purposes as to freedom's future. They had both fought bravely and well on that ill fated day, had fought against hope, but with unconquerable coolness and courage. Side by side they had led their commands to repeated and hopeless charges and when all was over, together they essayed escape by swimming the river.

I won't be taken prisoner, said Captain Babo and the two friends, both expert swimmers, struck out together for the Maryland shore. As they neared the Island, a volley was fired by the enemy. One was immediately heard to utter an exclamation in German, signifying that he had been hit. The other turned to his assistance. Neither were afterwards seen until the body of Lieut. Wesselhoeft was found, a fortnight later, below the Great Falls of the Potomac. As no wound was discovered upon his person, it is presumed that it was Captain Babo who was shot and that Lieut. Wesselhoeft lost his life in attempting to save his friend. It is certain that neither would have deserted the other and that the fate of either would have been shared by both. The body of Captain Babo, if recovered, has not been identified. This is but one incident of an event which was an accumulation of tragedies and for which nobody is responsible. Of our two friends, we may say:
Sleep In peace with kindred ashes
Of the noble and the true;
Hands that never failed their country,
Hearts that baseness never knew.
C.E.W.