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After a year or more of failing health, Charlton G. Duke, until the last three years a resident of Christian County, Ky., died at the home of his daughter in Huntington Park, Los Angeles, Cal., at the age of seventy-six years. For many years he owned and operated a farm near Hopkinsville, and he was also an expert road builder, many of the pikes of the county having been laid out by him; and he was the first manufacturer of concrete blocks in Hopkinsville.

Comrade Duke was a veteran of the Confederacy, having served with distinction as a first lieutenant of Company A, 22nd Kentucky Infantry. Enlisting in April, 1864, as a lad of seventeen, he first served under Col. Lee A. Sypert, in Gen. Adam R. Johnson's command, taking part in several hot engagements. After Johnson received the wound which caused his blindness, at Grubb's Crossroads, Ky., young Duke was a follower of Colonel Chenowith, under Gen. H. B. Lyon, then commanding the forces in Western Kentucky. He and his brother, John C. Duke, and a cousin, Capt. Lindsey Buckner, were sent from Paris, Tenn., back into Kentucky to gather up some of the men who had become seperated from the comman, when they were captured and sent to Louisville as prisoners. These three and Capt. C. B. Wallace were selected by General Burbridge to be shot in retaliation for the killing of a mail carrier by guerillas, but the intercession of influential friends and the payment of a large sum of money, saved the Duke boys and Captain Wallace, but Captain Buckner and others were scrificed by the inhuman Federal. Lieutenant Duke was then sent to Johnson's Island and his brother to Camp Chase until the close of the war.

Returning to Kentucky in June, 1865, he located in Christian County and engaged in farming. He was a man of high ideals, strict integrity, generous and sympathetic in disposition, and a devoted member of the Methodist Church. His wife survives him with two daughters and two sons - C. R. Duke, of Portville, Cal., and Lionel Duke, of Hopkinsville, Ky. The daughters are Mrs. P. E. West and Mrs. I. N. Shrader, of Huntington Park, Cal.