Relative Of Notable. Robert Moffat Livingstone was the first-born son of Scottish explorer, David Livingstone. For the first seven years of his life, he experienced the harsh lands of Africa before his mother returned to Britain with her six children for their education. As a child in Africa, traveling from country to country, he drank polluted water and suffered from hunger. He was ill with malaria and malnutrition and witnessed the harrowing death from fever of his infant sister. In England, he was branded as lazy and ill-disciplined, and sent at the age of twelve by his father to various boarding schools. His mother returned to Africa to accompany his father on his explorations of the Zambezi in 1862 but she became very ill and died. Two years after the death of his mother, he and his siblings were placed in the homes of other relatives while his father was exploring Africa. As a sixteen-year old boy, he was placed in the home of two maiden aunts, who wanted to control a teenager. After an abortive trip to Cape Town to find his father, he signed on as a crew member on a ship bound for the United States and Boston Harbor. He changed his name to Rupert Vincent. During the American Civil War, he enlisted January 22, 1864 as a "Declaration of Substitute" for Horace Heath. The document stated he was born in South Africa, was age 21 and a sailor. The certificate goes on to confirm that Vincent had hazel eyes, dark hair, dark complexion and was 5 feet 7 inches high. He served in Company K 3rd New Hampshire Volunteers. It was documented that he "Deserted from the regiment before Petersburg on August 24, 1864" but later it was learned he was in the hospital and "returned to duty from hospital October 6, 1864". On the next day, General Robert E. Lee's Confederates attempted to re-take part of the Fort Harrison lines but failed. He was at that battle and was captured then sent south to the Confederate P.O.W. camp in Salisbury, North Carolina. The P.O.W camp was over-crowded with little food or shelter. There was no food available to be given to the prisoners. On November 25, 1865 after no food for 48 hours, there was a prisoner riot and "every gun of the garrison was turned on the prisoners." During the riots, 16 Union prisoners were killed and sixty injured including him. It would be three days before he was admitted to the Confederate prison hospital, receiving little nursing care or food. On this hospital admission, it was recorded that he was assigned to Company H, not K as previously documented. On his original Casualty Sheet, he died at Salisbury, North Carolina, "December 4, 1864 of unknown disease." In his file, there are two Casualty Sheets with one showing the death date as December 5, 1864 and died of wounds but does not mention being captured. This date of December 5, 1864 is on his final document. In the meantime, his family had been searching for him. Learning he was in "a hospital," all Union hospitals were searched but the report received was "No such man in hospital as Robert M. Livingston alias Rupert Vincent". Unbeknown to his family, he was not in a Union hospital but a Confederate P.O.W camp hospital. According to an article from the University of North Carolina, Robert Livingstone is likely buried without a coffin in a mass grave in what is now Salisbury National Cemetery. From data collected after the end of the war, it was learned the prisoner detained at the Salisbury P.O.W. Camp suffered from one of the highest prison death rates, with as many as half the men dying of starvation or disease.