William Alexander Ogden (1843-1896)

Nancy Ogden Westerdahl’s Great Grandfather

On October 9, 1861, eighteen year old William A. Ogden from Gettysburg,  enlisted in the Union Army in Company F, 87th Pennsylvania Volunteer Regiment. He participated in all the battles in which the Regiment was engaged until May 4,1864 when he was captured by the Confederates just prior to the Battle of the Wilderness in Northern Virginia.

Two days after he was taken prisoner, Pvt. Ogden arrived at Andersonville Prison in Georgia, which was overcrowded to four times its capacity. Approximately 45,000 Union prisoners were held at the infamous prison during the war, and nearly 13,000 men died there because of diseases caused by the unsanitary conditions and inadequate water and food.

Surrounded by the sick, dead and dying, Pvt. Ogden endured his suffering for nearly eight months until his release on December 21, 1864. On February 25, 1865 he was discharged from the service, by then far from being in good health.

As a result of contracting scurvy during his imprisonment, Ogden was in poor health the rest of his life. Despite several appeals to the Pension Department, Ogden was never granted funds for medical assistance.

He returned to Gettysburg where he married Clara Ann Hess on March 26, 1872. He fathered five children including William Wesley Ogden, Nancy’s Grandfather. He died on February 27, 1896, at the age of 53.

Men who fought with Pvt. Ogden described him as extremely modest but a “faithful and honest soldier in the cause of the Union.” 

NOTE: Andersonville, the story of the concentration-like prison by MacKinley Kantor, is considered one of the greatest Civil War novels ever written.

Bruce - May 1, 2014