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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Ed Smith (halfback)

American football player, born 1923

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 revisionSep 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ5335419 ↗
Source-derived summary

Oscar Edwin Smith Jr. (July 20, 1923 – May 18, 2010) was a former fullback in the National Football League (NFL). He was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in the third round of the 1948 NFL draft and played that season with the team before splitting the following season between the Packers and the New York Bulldogs.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ed Smith (halfback)” is american football player, born 1923. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Smith, halfback and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1923, 2010, 1948—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1923-07-20. For this dossier, Smith, halfback and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american football player, born 1923” 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.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5335419. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 2010 and 1948.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. 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 “Ed Smith (halfback)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ed Smith (halfback) primary sources, Ed Smith (halfback) archive and Smith 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 “Ed Smith (halfback)”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Ed Smith (halfback)” 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.