Robert Mush, or Mursh, a Pamunkey Indian, attended the Brafferton Indian School at the College of William and Mary and enlisted as a private in the 15th Virginia Regiment in 1776. He fought at Brandywine and Germantown in Pennsylvania in 1777 and was taken prisoner of war in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1780. After about 14 months he was exchanged, marched to Georgia with a Virginia battalion, and served in the Southern Campaign until the end of the war. He later served as a member of the Pamunkey Tribal Government, became a Baptist minister, and eventually moved to South Carolina, where his family settled among the Catawba Indians.