George Camp was born around 1842 in Woodford, Vermont, to Jonas and Derexa Camp. He grew up and attended school in Woodford, and his father died around 1850. By the early 1860s, he was working as a shingle maker.
He enlisted in the Union army on July 26, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company E of the 10th Vermont Infantry on September 1. According to his service records, he was 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with black hair and black eyes. In August 1863, he dismissed the Civil War as a “damd [n----r] war” and predicted that “peas will be declared [in] les then 3 months.” He assured his sister Mary that, “if I once git out of the harnis they [won’t] git me again.” He reportedly “fell sick on the march from Mine Run to Brandy Station” on December 2, 1863, and Confederate forces captured him later that day. He spent the next few months imprisoned in Richmond, Virginia. He died there of pneumonia on March 7, 1864.