Allen A. Bursley was born in July 1834 in Massachusetts. He enrolled at the United States Military Academy in July 1850. As he later explained, however, he was “compelled to resign in July 1854, owing to an alleged deficiency in the department of Chemistry.” He later worked as an agent “on the Public Works on the Gulf Coast.”

 

By the early 1860s, he was living in Louisiana. In February 1861, he applied for a commission in the Confederate army. He assured President Jefferson Davis that he was “a Northerner by birth, but a Southerner by adoption and family connection, as well as by every interest and feeling.” He applied again two months later, and he eventually received a commission as captain of the Watson Battery, Louisiana Artillery. He remained in the army until the end of the war, and Union forces captured him on May 19, 1865.

 

He settled in Mississippi after the war, and he earned a living as a furniture dealer. He married Alice Anderson. He supported the Democratic Party, and he attended a statewide convention in June 1872. He died in Vicksburg, Mississippi, on August 31, 1878, during an epidemic. As a local writer explained, “he was one of the foremost in lending a helping hand to the sick and suffering, and never tired of the good work till disease struck him down.”

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