George Bender was born on June 22, 1837, in Pennsylvania to David and Mary Bender. His father was a farmer who owned $1,050 of real estate and $1,200 of personal property by 1860. He lived in North Beaver, Pennsylvania, until the 1850s, when he moved to Taylor, Pennsylvania. By the early 1860s, he was working as a boatman.
He enlisted in the Union army on June 8, 1861, and he mustered in as a private in Battery B of the 1st Pennsylvania Light Artillery. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with dark hair and blue eyes. The regiment took part in the Seven Days Battles, the Second Battle of Manassas, the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg, the Battle of Chancellorsville, the Battle of Gettysburg, and the Overland Campaign.
According to an early biographer, he “was stricken in the field in 1862 with virulent typhoid fever.” He was also “severely wounded” at Second Manassas in August 1862. Army officials brought him to Washington, D.C., to recover, and he was reportedly “poisoned by the mistaken administration of medicine.” Two members of his battery finally intervened and helped nurse him back to health. The incident, however, left him partially deaf and “physically disabled.”
Army officials assigned him to the Invalid Corps, but he “refused to serve as an invalid, and marched alone across the states of Maryland and Virginia to rejoin his company.” He mustered out on June 9, 1864.
He returned to Taylor after leaving the army, and he married Margaret Shaffer around 1867. They had at least three children: Ida, born around 1870; William, born around 1873; and David, born around 1877. He earned a living as a laborer, and he moved to Mahoning, Pennsylvania, in the 1870s. He applied for a federal pension in September 1877 and eventually received one. He died on January 22, 1898.