Robert Reid was born in Prince William Parish, Beaufort District, South Carolina, in 1789.

In May 1832, he was appointed United States judge for the district of East Florida by U.S. President Andrew Jackson.

With his first wife Anna Margaret McClaws, whom he married in 1811, Reid had five children: Janet, James, Florida, Rosalie, and Robert Raymond III.

Reid presided at the convention that drafted Florida's first constitution and advocated a vigorous prosecution of the Second Seminole War.

He died at his home in Blackwood near Tallahassee, Florida, on July 1, 1841, a victim of a yellow fever epidemic.