William Chase was born on November 8, 1834, in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Margaret Chase. His father was a farmer who owned $2,000 of real estate and $600 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in South Creek, Pennsylvania, and by the early 1860s, he was working as a farmer in Tioga County, Pennsylvania.
He enlisted in the Union army on September 21, 1861, and he mustered in as a sergeant in Company I of the 45th Pennsylvania Infantry on October 18. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 11 inches tall, with black hair and grey eyes. The regiment took part in the Battle of South Mountain, the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Fredericksburg, the siege of Vicksburg, and the Overland Campaign.
He was promoted to 1st lieutenant on September 14, 1862, then to captain on August 12, 1863. He was wounded in the shoulder in the Battle of the Wilderness on May 6, 1864, but he eventually recovered and rejoined the regiment. In April 1865, he noted that many Union officers were “sadly demoralized” by the generous terms offered to General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Chase argued that “they are dealing to[o] lightly with traitors.”
He settled in Delmar, Pennsylvania, after the war, and by 1880, he was living in his sister Mary’s household. According to one acquaintance, Chase rarely spoke about his military service. Nonetheless, he remained a “staunch and unswerving republican, his ballots always going as his bullets went.” He moved to Milford, Iowa, in the 1880s, and he died there on April 13, 1896.