This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography articles
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles
This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
This article's subject may not comply with the notability requirement for Wikipedia articles. It should be remembered that, notability requires "that the subject has received significant attention by the world at large, to support a claim of notability." This is one officer from the Civil War, who was unfortunately killed in battle. His contribution to the war effort is not being questioned. What is being questioned is whether he meets the notability requirement. He came from a distinguished family, yes, but that does not establish notability. Two cited sources are genealogical records. Two other cited sources are contemporary newspaper articles about his death. Another cited source appears is a memorial record published by the family. Please see the Wikipedia page on Notability for more information about how to improve this article.
This article is certainly a lower ranked article about a civil war commander killed in action at a major battle, but "determining notability does not necessarily depend on things like fame, importance, or the popularity of a topic". This article certainly meets the basic nobility critera: "A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has been the subject of published secondary source material which is reliable, intellectually independent, and independent of the subject." In addition, this article indeed satisfies your statement that it must have "signficant attention by the world at large" -- any objective biography that is still currently in print meets this criteria. Your assertion that his biography was written by the family is not factual. The biography was written anonymously and all we know about the author is the following "Affectionaly inscribed by their friend", the author is generally thought to be the editor of a newspaper or a politico in Massachussettes (Howard M. Burnham's father was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature and Justice of the Peace). Also, no claim was made that his nobility achivement came from his distinguished family. -- Ctatkinson (talk) 16:56, 15 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]