John Sawyer was born around 1844 in Camden County, North Carolina. By the early 1860s, he was working as a farmer. He enlisted in the Confederate army on May 6, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company A of the 56th North Carolina Infantry later that day. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 5 inches tall. The regiment was stationed in North Carolina for much of the war, and it took part in the siege of Petersburg and the Appomattox campaign. He surrendered as part of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia on April 9, 1865. He died sometime after the war.