Peter Burwell Starke - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Starke was born in Brunswick County, Virginia. His older brother William Edwin Starke also became a general in the Confederate army. Prior to the Civil War, the brothers worked in the family's stagecoach business that operated between Lawrenceville and Petersburg, Virginia. In early 1840, Peter Starke moved to the South, settling in Bolivar County, Mississippi, where he became active in local politics.

In 1846, while his brother was in the United States Army during the Mexican War, Starke run for a seat in the United States Congress as a member of the Whig Party to replace Jefferson Davis (who had resigned to lead a Mississippi regiment). However, Starke was defeated in the general election by Democrat Henry T. Ellett. Four years later, he was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives. In 1856, he was elected to the Mississippi State Senate.

Read more about this topic:  Peter Burwell Starke

Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:

    I looked at my daughters, and my boyhood picture, and appreciated the gift of parenthood, at that moment, more than any other gift I have ever been given. For what person, except one’s own children, would want so deeply and sincerely to have shared your childhood? Who else would think your insignificant and petty life so precious in the living, so rich in its expressiveness, that it would be worth partaking of what you were, to understand what you are?
    —Gerald Early (20th century)

    I think that any woman who sets goals for herself and takes her own life seriously and moves to achieve the goals that she wants as a person in her own right is a feminist.
    Frances Kuehn (b. 1943)

    In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.
    Barbara Dale (b. 1940)