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W.N. Starke
(1835 - 1878)
Home State: Louisiana
Education: University of Virginia (c. 1858), University of Louisiana
Branch of Service: Staff
Unit: Starke's Brigade
Before Sharpsburg
Son of successful cotton merchant and later Confederate Brigadier General William E Starke, he usally went by his middle name. In 1850 he was a 15 year old living with his parents and 4 siblings in New Orleans, LA. He was a merchant in his own right in New Orleans by about 1860 and enrolled and mustered there on 19 April 1861 as First Lieutenant of Company E, First (Strawbridge's) Louisiana Infantry. He was detailed as Judge Advocate to General W.W. Loring on 6 (or 16) August 1861 and transferred temporarily as Adjutant to the 60th Virginia Infantry on 15 October (reporting on 16 November). He returned to the First Louisiana on 23 February 1862.
He was appointed Captain and Assistant Adjutant General (AAG) and assigned to his father on 9 August 1862.
On the Campaign
He was on his father's staff at Sharpsburg.
The rest of the War
He was assigned to General J.H. Winder's staff on 17 October 1862 and to Geneal A.P. Hill on 8 June 1863. He was promoted to Major and AAG on 19 February 1864. He was surrendered and paroled at Appomattox Court House, VA on 9 April 1865.
After the War
He was a salesman and store clerk in St. Louis, MO by 1870 and to 1878. He died of yellow fever at 152 Carondelet Street in New Orleans, LA on 5 September 1878.
He was originally interred in the Girod Street Cemetery in New Orleans, but was removed in February 1879.
References & notes
His service from his Compiled Service Records,1 online from fold3, also as W. Norman Starke, and from Krick.2 Personal details from family genealogists, the US Census of 1850 (as Norman Starke), the Catalogue of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity (1900), and his matriculation record at Virginia. His gravesite is on Findagrave. His picture from a c. 1864 photograph sold by the Horse Soldier in Gettysburg.
Birth
11/08/1835; Brunswick County, VA
Death
09/05/1878; New Orleans, LA; burial in Cedar Hill Cemetery, Vicksburg, MS
1 US War Department, Compiled Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, Record Group No. 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records), Washington DC: US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), 1903-1927 [AotW citation 34862]
2 Krick, Robert E.L., Staff Officers in Gray; A Biographical Register of the Staff Officers in the Army of Northern Virginia, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, p. 274 [AotW citation 34863]