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David Graham Shillington

British politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 22, 2025
Entity authorityQ5234306
Source-derived summary

Major David Graham Shillington PC(NI) (10 December 1872 – 22 January 1944) was an Ulster Unionist politician and agricultural and builders' merchant.

Early life

Shillington was a son of Thomas Primus Shillington (1831-1889), of Tavanagh House, Portadown, County Armagh, of a prominent Methodist mercantile family, by his wife Mary Jane (d. 1915), née Graham. His cousin was the factory owner and politician Thomas Shillington. Shillington was educated at Methodist College Belfast and Rydalmount School, Colwyn Bay. He was the proprietor of a general merchant's shop in Belfast. In April 1895 he married Sarah Louisa Collen of Killicomaine, Portadown and they had six children. He served in the First World War as a Major in the 9th Royal Irish Fusiliers.

Career

In 1921, he was elected to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland as Unionist member for Armagh, and then for Armagh, Central in 1929 until he resigned on medical advice in February 1941.

He served as Minister of Labour from 1937–38.

Editorial summary

“David Graham Shillington” enters the record as british politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what David, Graham and Shillington can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1872, 1944, 1831, 1889—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1872-12-10. Its strongest next move is a source search built around David, Graham and Shillington.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“David Graham Shillington” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, David, Graham and Shillington provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

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 Aug 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5234306. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1872, 1944, 1831 and 1889.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. 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.

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 “David Graham Shillington”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow David Graham Shillington primary sources, David Graham Shillington archive and David 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 “David Graham Shillington”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from David Graham Shillington” 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.