| William Washington Wells was born December 29,
1839, the son of Thomas D. and Ann E. Wells of Chesterfield County,
Virginia. On April 24, 1861, when he was a 21-year-old farmer, William
W. enlisted in Captain W.W.T. Cogbill’s company of riflemen,
the Chesterfield Central Guards, which soon became Company D of
the 14th Virginia Infantry.
The 14th Virginia Infantry consisted of companies
from Chesterfield, Amelia, Bedford, Fluvanna, Halifax, and Mecklenburg
counties. The regiment was organized in May 1861 and entered Confederate
service at Richmond on July 1, 1861, under Colonel James Gregory
Hodges. After serving in Tidewater Virginia and North Carolina from
the summer of 1861 to the spring of 1862, the 14th joined a brigade
of Virginia regiments under Brigadier General Lewis A. Armistead.
This brigade became a part of General George E. Pickett’s division
of General James Longstreet’s First Corps in the Army of Northern
Virginia. The 14th fought under Armistead and Pickett at Seven Pines,
in the Seven Days, at Second Manassas, Sharpsburg, and Fredericksburg,
and in the operations at Suffolk in April and May 1863.
Private Wells was present for duty during all
of this time except for a few weeks in the winter of 1862, when
he went on leave to his home in Chesterfield. The following summer
he was promoted to corporal. In February 1863, Corporal Wells endured
a short stay in Chimborazo Hospital when a bout of rheumatism got
the best of him.
The 14th Virginia returned from Suffolk in the
spring of 1863 in time to join General Lee’s army for its march
into Pennsylvania. At Gettysburg on July 3, 1863, the 14th Virginia
fought gallantly in Pickett’s Charge and suffered heavy casualties
along with its sister regiments in Armistead’s Brigade. Colonel
Hodges and Captain Cogbill were killed … and Second Corporal
Wells of Company D fell into the hands of the enemy. He was sent
to Fort McHenry then to Fort Delaware as a prisoner of war, was
paroled at Fort Delaware on July 30 and exchanged at City Point
the following day. He reported back to his regiment, which was on
duty in the Richmond area with the remnants of Pickett’s division. |
|
Pickett’s men saw little action for the
next several months while the rest of Longstreet’s corps fought
in Georgia and Tennessee. In the fall of 1863, when Lee’s army
maneuvered and fought with the enemy in northern Virginia, the 14th
Virginia followed General Pickett to his new command in eastern
North Carolina. In the spring of 1864, they returned to central
Virginia. On April 18, 1864, Second Corporal Wells was promoted
to fifth sergeant of his company. He fought with the rest of the
14th in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign here in Chesterfield, first
in the Battle of Chester Station on May 10 then in the Battle of
Drewry’s Bluff on May 16. The following month found the 14th
protecting Petersburg against Grant’s colossal army. They remained
in the Petersburg trenches the entire 10 months of the long, bloody
siege.
However, Sergeant Wells did not make it to the
end of the siege, nor did he join his regiment in its forlorn retreat
to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. At the Battle of Five Forks
on April 1, 1865, Sergeant Wells again fell into the hands of the
enemy. He was taken to City Point as a prisoner of war and spent
the next two months on Hart’s Island in New York Harbor. On
June 20, 1865, he took the oath of allegiance to the United States
and headed back to his home in Chesterfield. The Yankee officer
who administered the oath to him recorded that he was of fair complexion,
had dark hair and dark eyes, and stood 5 feet 6 inches tall.
William Washington Wells married twice after the war, first to Susan Marshall Watts on March 16, 1871. They had
two sons, Willis Wadsworth Wells, born in 1875, and Roger Lee Wells,
born in 1880. After Susan died in 1886, he married a widow, Irvenia
Beasely. He died during the influenza epidemic on August 13, 1917,
and was buried in Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg.
The memory of Sergeant William W. Wells, Company
D, 14th Virginia Infantry, is perpetuated in this camp by his grandson,
Compatriot W. Courtney Wells. |
