“They were always patriots and they were speedy in any action in defense of their country. It is said they never did a mean thing. They never stopped working, and they never missed a pay roll. Their loyalty to their employees produced loyalty in return, and the finest tributes that can be heard are the opinions of men who worked for the heads of the house of Fuller all down the line to this day.” – Excerpt from “Big Achievements of the House of Fuller”
The members of the Fuller family of Catasauqua, Pennsylvania who served with the Union Army during the Civil War hold a distinguished place in American history. Each of the Fuller men who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers was descended from England’s Robert Fuller, the father of Edward Fuller, 21st signatory of the Mayflower Compact. Edward Fuller later arrived aboard the Mayflower with his wife, Anne, and sons, Matthew and Samuel, at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts in November 1620.
Fifteen years later Samuel was married to Jane Lathrop by Captain Miles Standish in Scituate, Massachusetts on 8 April 1635. Samuel Fuller then ultimately became the great-great-great-grandfather of two members of the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers – 1st Lieutenant George W. Fuller and Private Orlando Fuller of F Company – and the great-great-great-great-grandfather of another – 1st Lieutenant and Regimental Adjutant James W. Fuller, Jr. who served as a sergeant with F Company before being promoted to the same regiment’s central command staff.
In 1860, Orlando and George Fuller resided in Catasauqua, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania with their parents, Pennsylvania natives Chauncey Day Fuller (1799-1870) and Sarah (Abbott) Fuller (also born sometime around 1799). There, their father was employed as a Justice of the Peace while George and Orlando helped out financially through employment, respectively, as a laborer and clerk.
Meanwhile, James W. Fuller, Jr. was also residing in Catasauqua with his parents, Clarissa (Miller) Fuller, a Pennsylvania native and daughter of Henry and Catherine (Sterner) Miller, and James Wheeler Fuller, Sr. (1821-1872), a native of Forty Fort, Northampton County, Pennsylvania who was another son of Chauncey Day Fuller and brother to the aforementioned Orlando and George Fuller.
Described on the 1860 federal census as a “Gentleman,” James W. Fuller, Sr. was a close friend of Andrew Gregg Curtin, 15th Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
* Note: Leader of the Keystone State throughout the Civil War, Governor Andrew Curtin later founded the Commonwealth’s system of soldiers’ and orphans’ schools to educate and care for the children of Pennsylvania’s fallen men. Camp Curtin, one of the main staging areas for Union troops in Harrisburg during the Civil War, was named for him. According to the 23 January 1911 edition of The Allentown Leader:
During the worst days of the Rebellion, when Curtin needed help, no man did more to assist him in sending soldiers to the front [than James W. Wheeler, Sr.]. Often, to get relief from the cares of office, Governor Curtin came to Catasauqua to spend Sunday at the Fuller home. James W. Fuller, the first, was one of the most active spirits in raising the 47th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers, of which his son, James W. Fuller, second … became adjutant.
By 1863, James W. Fuller, Sr. (J.W.F., “the first”) had also enrolled for military duty, and was serving as a Private with Company B, 38th Pennsylvania Volunteers. According to Dale Charles Wint’s A History of the Iron Industry and Allied Businesses of the Iron Borough Catasauqua Pennsylvania, James W. Fuller, Sr. was also “the second highest income earner in Lehigh County” thanks to his successes as “a large-scale horse dealer with the federal government.” (Two years earlier, in 1858, James W. Fuller, Sr. had also created the Fairview Cemetery in what is now West Catasauqua in Lehigh County, and played a key role in the community’s post-Civil War efforts to raise a monument there to honor the men of Lehigh County who helped to preserve America’s Union. Prior to that, James Full