Civil War Pension File – Robert Reid Burchfield , Co. E, 63rd Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers
Robert Reid Burchfield
Robert Reid Burchfield was born February 12, 1830, in Saegertown, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, to Nancy McGill Burchfield and John Burchfield. As grandson of Anna Marie Baird and Patrick McGill, he was part of deep Pennsylvania roots intertwined with family military legacies.
Amid the Civil War's later stages, Robert was drafted and mustered into Company E, 63rd Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers on September 8, 1863. The 63rd — known as the "Third Pennsylvania Reserves" — had fought in major Eastern Theater battles like Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg before his enlistment. By 1864, many members faced capture during campaigns like the Wilderness or Petersburg sieges, leading to imprisonment.
Robert did not survive the war. He died January 31, 1865, at the Florence Stockade Military Prison in Florence, South Carolina — a hastily constructed Confederate facility opened in September 1864 to relieve overcrowding at Andersonville. Enclosing 23 acres with pine-log walls, it held up to 18,000 Union prisoners at its peak. Conditions were appalling: minimal shelter (prisoners dug "shebangs" or lived exposed), starvation rations (cornmeal mush, occasional beef), rampant scurvy/dysentery/smallpox from contaminated creek water (used for drinking, washing, and latrines), brutal winters with ice storms, and a "dead-line" where crossing meant being shot. Nearly 2,800 men perished in just months, buried in mass trenches — later reinterred at Florence National Cemetery. Robert's death, likely from disease or exposure, exemplifies the quiet tragedies of late-war POWs far from the front lines.
