   The following article appears in the book, "Killed In Action" by Gregory
A. Coco, ppgs. 92-93.

                        SERGEANT GEORGE O. FELL
          COMPANY B, 143RD PENNSYVANIA INFANTRY
              2ND BRIGADE, 3RD DIVISION, 1ST CORPS

    At the time of the battle, J. Howard Wert was a teenager who lived
sourth of Gettysburg on his father's farm near White Run. Writing in 1907
about the sacrifices of Union soldiers in the Civil War, he imparted:
      "George Ogden Fell was nothing to me. I never saw the young hero
alive or dead. I never heard his name until I read his obituary in a
religious journal of the day...[He] came from the little town of Waverly,
Pennsylvania. He was a sergeant in company B, of the One Hundred and
Forty-Third Pennsylvania volunteers, one of the three regiments of Roy
Stone's brave "Bucktail Brigade" that left more than two-thirds of its entire
membership dead or wounded on the slopes beyond the seminary.
    Severely wounded in the hip, Young Fell was left upon the field within
the enemy's lines. He was found two days afterwards in a private residence,
placed there, probably by the enemy, and was made as comfortable as
circumstances would allow.
    His father, who repaired immediately to the battlefield, had only the
melancholy satisfaction of finding a mess of corruption, wrapped in a
soldier's blanket, with a few inches of earth over it, but recognized it by
marked articles of clothing as the body of his son. Unable to remove the
body, and the National Cemetery being not yet planned, he secured for it
decent burial in the grass-grown and ancient graveyard attached to the German
Reformed Church, on High street, Gettysburg.
    This was but one case of tens of thousands, at the same moment,
darkening all the land and filling it with lamentations. Of a fine person
and brilliant accomplishments, just ready to enter Yale College, with
glittering prizes for honor and success opening before him and beckoning him
onward, he dropped all, thrilled by his country's need, and at the age of
eighteen, volunteered beneath the Stars and Stripes in the company in which
his elder brother, who went unhurt through the fires of Gettysburg, was a
lieutenant.[Asher M. Fell]
    The name of George Ogden Fell today, like that of a million other heroes
who fought and suffered, is but a misty memory.... What do we owe to George
Ogden Fell and the 48,902 others of the Army of the Potomac who died in
battle; to the tens of thousands of the same army who died of disease....?"

    In this interesting and moving article focuses on granting pensions to
Civil War veterans, Wert leaves the impression that Fell was wounded on July
1. This may have been true. Nonetheless, his military records testify that
he was mortally wounded on July 3. This information could be correct even
though the 143rd was but slightly engaged on that date when it assisted in
the repulse of the so-called, "Pickett's Charge." In the days following the
establishment of the Soldiers' National Cemetery, the body of Sergeant Fell
was moved to the Pennsylvania section where it was noted and eulogized by Mr.
Wert, and where his grave can be visited today.

Last Updated on 2/12/2001
By Ben Dluzeski

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Mary Ann Lubinsky
County Coordinator

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