Donald Reid (politician, born 1855)
New Zealand politician (1855–1920)
Donald Reid (1855 – 25 August 1920) was a Dunedin, New Zealand solicitor and partner in his father's stock and station agency. For two consecutive terms he was an independent conservative Member of Parliament in New Zealand. His father had represented the same electorate for three terms a generation earlier.
Early life
Eldest son of Donald Reid and his wife born Frances Barr, he was their first child and was born at Caversham 15 October 1855 where his 22-year-old Scots-born father had purchased his first block of land two years before. The next year they moved to Salisbury, North Taieri.
The Law and the stock & station agency
Educated at North Taieri District School Donald Reid junior studied law while an articled clerk with Dunedin's Smith, Anderson & Co. He was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 1879 while still at Smith, Anderson & Co. A year later he went out on his own and, until 1888, practised as a solicitor with his brother, J S Reid (1857–1894), on his own account.
Then he entered as a partner in his father's stock and station agency business, Donald Reid & Co, but after almost ten years retired from that in 1897 to resume practice as a solicitor. He was joined in this new practice in 1900 by partner P S K Macassey — Reid & Macassey — and later by a Mr Bundle.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Donald Reid (politician, born 1855)” as new Zealand politician (1855–1920). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5295053. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1855, 1920, 1879 and 1888.
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This entry incorporates text from “Donald Reid (politician, born 1855)” 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.