Robert Brock was born in 1829 in Albemarle County, Virginia. Prior to the war, Brock lived with his first wife Elizabeth Clayborn in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Surviving records suggest that Brock was born a free man, and he worked as a laborer before serving in the Civil War.

Brock enlisted in the Union army as a private on February 27, 1864, in New Brighton, Pennsylvania. His service record describes him as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with black hair, brown eyes, and yellow complexion. He served in Company G of the 32nd USCT Infantry Regiment. On November 1, Brock achieved the rank of corporal. The 32nd USCT served throughout South Carolina during the war, participating in the Battle of Honey Hill on November 30, 1864, and taking part in demonstrations against the Charleston & Savannah Railroad later that Decmber. In early 1865, he suffered gunshot wounds to his left hand and right arm, and he spent the next few months recuperating in a military hospital. He mustered out as a corporal on August 22, 1865, in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

After the war, Brock returned to Pittsburg, where he worked as a laborer. His wife Elizabeth died in 1869, and Brock then moved to Greensburg, Louisiana. On December 1, 1870, he married Rosa Brock, a 29-year-old former slave. They had at least six children together: Jacob, born March 16, 1871; John Henry, born February 11, 1872; Mary Eliza, born August 19, 1873; Moses, born July 15, 1874; Rosetta, born June 10, 1875; and Orville, born May 18, 1876. Brock and his family moved to Thibodeaux in 1877 and to Plaquemine in Iberville Parish in 1878. Brock worked as laborer and farm servant, probably sharecropping, on Edwin Marionment's Belfort Plantation in Plaquemine. In 1905, Brock began receiving an $8-per-month pension for "general senile debility." He died of heart disease in Plaquemine on April 30, 1906. His wife Rosa began receiving a widow's pension later that year. She died in Plaquemine on October 11, 1914.

Documents:

Pension Testimony of Rosa Brock