Walter C. Whitaker

Birth Date

1823-08

Death Date

1887-07-09

Gender

Race Description

White

Entity Type

Person

Shelby County, Kentucky, politician and soldier. Shelby County, Kentucky, native. Graduated of Bethany College in Bethany, Virginia. Served in the 3rd Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the U.S.-Mexican War from 1847 to 1848. Attended law school at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Attorney in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Member of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from Shelby County from 1857 to 1865. Attorney and farmer in Shelby County in 1860. Owned eleven enslaved persons in Shelby County in 1860. Served in the 6th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry Regiment (U.S.A.) as colonel from December 24, 1861, to June 25, 1863. Served in the Army of the Cumberland as brigadier general and brevet major general from June 25, 1863, to August 24, 1865.

Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Population Schedules, Kentucky, Shelby County, District 2, p. 12.
Eighth Manuscript Census of the United States (1860), Slave Schedules, Kentucky, Shelby County, District 2, p. 1.
Society of the Army of the Cumberland: Nineteenth Reunion, Chicago, Illinois, 1888 (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1889), 190-94.
Lewis Collins and Richard H. Collins, Collins' Historical Sketches of Kentucky, vol. 2 (Covington, Ky.: Collins & Co., 1882), 709.

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