861), garrisoned Fort Taylor in Key West, Florida and served in the U.S. Department of the South’s Beaufort District in South Carolina (1862), participated in the capture of Saint John’s Bluff, Florida (1-3 October 1862) and the Battle of Pocotaligo, South Carolina (21-23 October 1862), garrisoned Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, Florida (1863), and fought in Union General Nathaniel Banks’ Red River Campaign across Louisiana (as part of the only Pennsylvania regiment so engaged from March to May 1864).
Then, after his brother was discharged on a Surgeon’s Certificate on 22 June 1864, Private Orlando Fuller continued to fight on, serving with the 47th Pennsylvania at Snicker’s Gap under the command of General David Hunter (mid-July 1864) and then with the 47th under legendary General Philip H. Sheridan during the opening days of his tide-turning 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign.
On 18 September1864, Private Orlando Fuller mustered out from the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers at Berryville, Virginia upon expiration of his three-year term of service. He was also suffering from heart disease and aortic stenosis at this time. Less than two weeks later, his brother George was dead, having passed away at Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, Florida on 29 September.
Despite his heart condition, Private Orlando Fuller opted to continue to serve his nation, re-enrolling and re-mustering in on 24 February 1865 at Reading in Berks County, Pennsylvania as a Private with Company D of the 28th Pennsylvania Volunteers, a regiment attached to the Union Army’s 1st Brigade, 2nd Division, 20th Army Corps, Army of the Cumberland until June 1865, and then to the 3rd Brigade, Bartlett’s Division, 22nd Army Corps, U.S. Department of Washington. Among its late stage engagements, the 28th Pennsylvania engaged in the Campaign of the Carolinas (until April 1865), the Union Army’s march to Richmond, Virginia and Washington, D.C. (29 April-20 May 1865), and the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington, D.C. (23-24 May 1865). Following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the 28th Pennsylvania also served with the U.S. Department of Washington during the early days of the imprisonment and trial of the Lincoln assassination conspirators (May 1865).
Sometime during this phase of service, Private Orlando Fuller developed rheumatic heart disease; he was subsequently mustered out with his regiment at Alexandria, Virginia on 18 July 1865.
Return to Civilian Life
Following his second honorable discharge from the military, Orlando Fuller returned home to the Lehigh Valley for what he likely thought would be the remainder of his life. By 1870, still unmarried, he was employed as a laborer and living with the family of John Gohring, a retired grocer who resided in South Bethlehem, Northampton County, Pennsylvania.
Additional sources document that, during the 1870s, Orlando Fuller was employed with the McKee & Fuller Car Wheel Works, the family firm founded by his nephew, James W. Fuller, Jr. Unfortunately, according to the 22 April 1876 edition of The Carbon Advocate, he suffered a serious injury while on the job:
Mr. Orlando Fuller, an employee at the Car Wheel Works of McKee & Fuller, at Ferndale, had his left foot badly hurt one day last week by being struck thereon by a falling car wheel.
By 1895, Orlando Fuller was a resident of Wescosville, according to November 1895 editions of The Allentown Leader and The Allentown Democrat, which also announced that he had recently been awarded his original pension for service during the Civil War. The amount initially granted – $6.00 monthly – steadily increased over the years until reaching a rate of $12.00 per month, and was awarded due to his “Inability to earn a support by Manual labor,” according to an entry in the admissions ledger for the Central Branch of the U.S. National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio (where he was admitted on 7 November 1895).
This 1895 ledger entry also described him as an unmarried Protestant, former laborer, aged 69, who was 5’9” tall wit