Strangers to Us All
Lawyers and Poetry

William Stark

(1826-1873)
New Hampshire

"WILLIAM STARK was born July, 1826. He came to college from Manchester, N.H., where he has chiefly resided since graduation, a lawyer and poet. While the last pages of this book have been passing through the press, he has had a stroke of paralysis of the brain, resulting in insanity, and is now in the hospital at Somerville." [Calvin Durfee, Williams Biographical Annals 594-595 (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1871)][Stark was in the class of 1850 at Williams College.]

"Stark, William, lawyer, was born at Manchester, N.H., about 1825 . . . . He was graduated from Williams college in 1850, became a lawyer, and after two years' practice at Nashua, N.H., returned in 1853 to his native town, where he gained some note as a lecturer and writer, and more as owner of a park, which he made a sort of zoological garden, and threw open to the public. His mind gave way in 1860, and he was placed in the McLean asylum, at Somerville, Mass., where he died Oct. 29, 1873." [The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography 247 (New York: James T. White & Co., 1907)(vol. 4)]

"He wrote several poems, and frequently lectured." [Herringhsaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century 883 (Chicago: American Publishers' Assoc., 1898)]