Warren P. Searles was born around 1841 in New Hampshire to Warren D. Searles and Achsah Spalding. His father was a farmer who owned $1500 of real estate and $500 of personal property by 1860. The family lived in Amherst, New Hampshire, until the 1850s, when they moved to Nashua, New Hampshire. By 1860, Searles was working as a farm laborer. He probably moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the early 1860s, and by 1862, he was working as a clerk. He enlisted in the Union army on August 14, 1862, and mustered in as a private in Company C of the 40th Massachusetts Infantry on September 1. He probably died in the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff on May 16, 1864.