Robert Guyton was born on February 14, 1838, in McCandless, Pennsylvania, to John and Eliza Guyton. His father was a farmer who owned $7,000 of real estate and $500 of personal property. He grew up and attended school in McCandless, Pennsylvania.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on August 5, 1862, and mustered in as a corporal in Company F of the 139^th Pennsylvania Infantry on September 1. The regiment took part in the Battle of Gettysburg, the Overland Campaign, and the siege of Petersburg. He was promoted to sergeant on June 28, 1864, and he mustered out in Washington, D.C., on June 21, 1865.

 

Guyton returned to McCandless after the war, and he married Nancy Robinson around 1866. They had at least three children: John, born around 1867; Elizabeth, born around 1869; and William, born around 1871. He worked as a farmer, and by 1870, he owned $4,000 of real estate and $700 of personal property. He applied for a federal pension in November 1887 and eventually secured one.

 

His wife Nancy died in 1888. He remained in McCandless until at least 1910, eventually serving as a justice of the peace. He acted as secretary of the Farmers’ Mutual Fire Insurance Company and an elder of the Highland Presbyterian Church in Perrysville, Pennsylvania. He fractured his femur sometime in 1915, and he died of “chronic interstitial nephritis” in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August 28, 1915.

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