George Scott was born around 1833 in Albemarle County, Virginia, to George and Priscilla Scott. Scott's owner, John Coles Carter, migrated from Virginia to Missouri in 1852 and owned 126 slaves on multiple plantations by 1860. Prior to the war, Scott worked as a farmer and blacksmith on Carter's Lick Farm in Lincoln County.

Scott enlisted as a private in the Union army on May 10, 1864, in Louisiana, Missouri. He mustered into Company F of the 68th USCT Infantry Regiment on May 27 at Benton Barracks in St. Louis. His enlistment records describe him as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with black hair, black eyes, and a black complexion. Scott served in Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana. He fell ill in early 1865 and remained in the hospital in Memphis from January to October of 1865. He thus missed the assault and capture of Fort Blakeley in Alabama on April 9, 1865. Scott mustered out on February 5, 1866, in Camp Parapet, Louisiana.

After the war, Scott lived in Lincoln and Pike Counties in Missouri before moving to a soldiers' home in Danville, Illinois. He married Fannie Burton on May 15, 1870, in Paynesville. They had nine children together: Lena B., born in 1871; Alonzo, born in 1879; Carrie Scott Nelson, born in 1884; Benjamin Harrison, born September 3, 1891; Ada, whose birth date is unknown; Homer, whose birth date is unknown; and three others whose names are unkonwn. At some point, Scott began receiving a pension due to diarrhea and rheumatism. Scott died in the hospital at the Danville soldiers' from mitral regurgitation, an ailment in the heart. Fannie applied for a pension, but she never received one, because pension agents believed she was in another relationship after her husband's death.