Payson Burritt entered the Army when nineteen years old. He served in Co B 143th Reg Pa Vol and was a member of Kit Carson Post GAR in Washington DC. After the close of the Civil War he was employed as a civil engineer on the Union Pacific until it was completed and then on railroad construction in Texas. In 1877 he took up his residence in Washington where for 28 years he was connected with the foreign money order service in the office of the Sixth Auditor of the Post Office, only leaving it three weeks before his death He left a valuable estate (Family of William Blackleach Jr.)