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Stephen A. Corker

American politician (1830-1879)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ539812 ↗
Source-derived summary

Stephen Alfestus Corker (May 7, 1830 – October 18, 1879) was a lawyer and Confederate Civil War veteran who served briefly as a U.S. Representative from Georgia in early 1871. He was a plantation owner and enslaver.

Early life

Stephen A. Corker was born near Waynesboro, Georgia to Stephen Corker, a prosperous plantation owner, and his wife Salenah Lanier. He attended common schools in the county. When he was about ten years of age his father died. After his father's death his mother married Calvin B. Churchill, a Baptist clergyman. Corker studied law, was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Waynesboro, Georgia. He married Margaret Myrtice Palmer on October 26, 1859, at Augusta, Georgia. In addition to being a lawyer, he also engaged in agricultural pursuits. The 1860 Federal Census has Corker owning four slaves in addition to $4,000 in real estate and $5,600 in personal estate.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Stephen A. Corker” is american politician (1830-1879). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Stephen, Corker and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1830, 1879, 1871, 1859—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1830-05-07. For this dossier, Stephen, Corker and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american politician (1830-1879)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q539812. VIAF identifies the subject as 234145542781296641657. The Library of Congress control number is no2015169014. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1830, 1879, 1871 and 1859.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Stephen A. Corker”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Stephen A. Corker primary sources, Stephen A. Corker archive and Stephen research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Stephen A. Corker”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Stephen A. Corker” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.