Allen Bell
New Zealand politician (1870-1936)
Lt. Colonel Allan (Allen) Bell (14 February 1870 – 15 October 1936) was a New Zealand Member of Parliament for the Bay of Islands in Northland.
Early life
Bell was born at Southbridge, New Zealand on 14 February 1870. He was the son of Allen and Mary, farmers in the area. He worked as a bushman and a farmer. In 1895, Bell travelled to southern Africa and served with the British armed forces that in 1896 suppressed a rising by the Matabele (Ndebele) people.
He then saw active service with the Rhodesia Regiment during the South African (Boer) War. Bell was discharged on 31 January 1900 and returned to Taranaki. On 29 January 1902 he married James Helen Shaw Lambie at Pihama. They bought land at Te Rapa, north of Hamilton.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Allen Bell” is new Zealand politician (1870-1936). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Allen, Bell and Zealand, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “new Zealand politician (1870-1936)” 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.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4731532. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1870, 1936, 1895 and 1896.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Allen Bell” 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.