Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he moved to Philadelphia to become president of an insurance company. After retiring in 1870, he moved to Litchfield, Connecticut and became a dairy farmer on Echo farm. Later, he organized the Echo Farm Company, which controlled large creameries throughout a great part of Litchfield County. Starr served a term in the Connecticut legislature from 1883 - 1844. Interested in temperance and other reforms, Starr lectured extensively and published Didley Dumps, the Newsboy (Philadelphia, 1866), May I Not? or Two Ways of looking through a Telescope (1867), What Can I Do? a Question for Professing Christians (1867; revised, 1887); Farm Echoes (New York, 1881), and From Shore to Shore (Philadelphia, 1887).

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, eds. Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography. Vol. V. New York: Appleton, 1888. 654.

Also in:

Adams, Oscar Fay. A Dictionary of American Authors. Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1904. 357.