Estin Bon was born around 1824 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He later moved to Rapides Parish, Louisiana, where he served as an enslaved waiter on Mrs. Francis Sprigg's Flowerton Plantation. He married Viney Davis in 1861 on the Flowerton Plantation, and they had at least seven children: Estin, born January 6, 1867; Henry, born December 2, 1868; William, born October 24, 1877; Viney, born May 10, 1882; Eliza, born November 18, 1884; Gertrude, born May 23, 1887; and Rosa, born December 15, 1890.

Bon enlisted as a private on August 12, 1864, and mustered in on August 26 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His service record described him as 5 feet, 9 inches tall, with black hair, black eyes, and dark complexion. He served in Company C of the 4th USCT Cavalry Regiment, which spent the next year stationed in Louisiana and Mississippi. Bon participated in the defense of Baton Rouge from August 1864 to July 1865. Bon received two promotions during the war, becoming a corporal on November 29, 1864, and a sergeant on January 1, 1865. He later claimed to receive a debilitating hernia from "wearing tight belts while in the service of the U.S." Bon mustered out at New Orleans on March 20, 1866.

Following the war, Bon returned to Rapides Parish, Louisiana, where he lived for the rest of his life. He began receiving a pension in the early 1890s for a "complete left ingroinal hernia." In 1894, however, the government reduced his pension to $6 per month, because his medical records failed to demonstrate a completely incapacitating condition. Bon died of heart disease on August 5, 1899, on the Flowerton Plantation. His son Harry secured a pension for Bon's two surviving minor children, Gertrude and Rosa, in 1901.