Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. 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).