Robert Edward Norfleet

In 1860 he was a 16 year old living with his widowed mother, 2 siblings, 3 free black servants, and 4 slaves at Suffolk in Nansemond County, VA. He enlisted there on 17 April 1861, then a 17 year old student, and mustered in Suffolk on 27 April as a Sergeant in Company A, 16th Virginia Infantry. He was reduced to Private in June 1861. He was wounded at Malvern Hill, VA in June 1862 and at 2nd Manassas in August.

He was in action with his company at Crampton's Gap on South Mountain, MD on 14 September 1862.

He was wounded again, by a piece of shell to his head/scalp at Spotsylvania Court House, VA in May 1864 and was captured at Somerton, Southhampton County, VA on 5 April 1865. He was a prisoner at Camp Hamilton, VA to 1 May then at Newport News, VA, where he took an oath of allegiance to the United States and was released on 30 June 1865.

He returned home, but in the summer of 1866 attacked with "brickbats" a group of newly freed men who had pushed him from the sidewalk. Federal officers attempted his arrest, which he resisted, armed. Eventually a cavalry company came for him, but "the bird had flown" and he went to the "far West" for 17 years. In 1880 he was a farmer boarding with the Thomas McComb family in Corpus Cristi, TX but by 1900 he was the jailor back in Suffolk, VA; notably, all 10 of his prisoners in the jail at that Census were black men.

His service from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3, with details from his Reminiscences in the Confederate Veteran.2 Personal details from family genealogists and the US Census of 1860, 1880, & 1900. His gravesite is on Findagrave.

09/30/1843; Nansemond County, VA

09/24/1908; Nansemond, VA; burial in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Suffolk, VA