Charles Henry Burdick was born on January 7, 1842, in Windham County, Connecticut, to Charles C. Burdick and Nancy Rix. His father was a farmer who owned $3,500 of real estate and $2,000 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Brooklyn, Connecticut.
During the Civil War, he worked as a sutler and accompanied the 21st Connecticut Infantry. He decried the “Hard life” of military service, writing that it was difficult “sleeping on the ground, living on park and hard tac [sic] half of the time.” He insisted, however, that he would not “come home to stay untill I have some money, more than everybody in Brooklyn has.” He followed the regiment throughout Virginia, and he spent several weeks in Richmond shortly after Confederates abandoned the city. In April 1865, he reported “sorrowing times here about the assassination of Mr. Lincoln the soldiers all feel badly about it and the citizens of Richmond think it one of the worst calamity that could have happened to them. It was an awful affair.”
In August 1865, he travelled to Bothwell in Canada West (present-day Ontario). He remained until the spring of 1866 before moving to St. Louis, Missouri. He applied for a passport in March 1873, and the application described him as 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with light hair and hazel eyes. He died in Connecticut on January 28, 1903.