George W. Burke

Age 21, he had trained as a physician privately and at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia before he enrolled and was commissioned Assistant Surgeon of the 46th Pennsylvania Infantry in Washington, DC on 1 August 1862.

He was with his regiment in Maryland and treated wounded soldiers in a field hospital on the John Poffenberger farm at Antietam on 17 September 1862 and afterward.

He mustered out on 16 July 1865 in Alexandria, VA.

He completed his degree in 1866, practiced in Baltimore into that fall, then went west to New Castle, IN. He practiced in Sulphur Springs, IN from 1867-70, then in New Castle to 1900, and was president of the county medical society that year. He began receiving a veteran's pension for disability in July 1890 and was Commander of the GAR Post 148 in New Castle in 1891. He was elected Clerk of the County Court and was seated in October 1900, but became ill a few weeks later and died the next year.

His service from Bates1 and the Card File.2 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1870-1900, and bio sketches in History of Henry County, Indiana (1884) and Biographical Memoirs of Henry County, Indiana (1902). His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a photograph in the Scott D. Hann Collection, also published in Military Images (September/October 2002).

He married Martha Belle Shook (1844-1912) in 1870, but they divorced before 1900: he was living alone that year, boarding with his aunt Elizabeth Alsbaugh, and willed (November 1899) the bulk of his assets to is brothers and sisters, with no mention of Belle. Aunt Elizabeth got his iron bedstead. Belle died at her home in New Castle in 1912 of chloroform poisoning - which she took to treat her asthma, although she knew the danger. She's buried with the Shooks in Greencastle, PA.

02/22/1841; Franklin County, PA

10/17/1901; New Castle, IN; burial in South Mound Cemetery, New Castle, IN