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Eli B. Ames

American lawyer and politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ21028365
Source-derived summary

Eli B. Ames (August 3, 1820 – February 12, 1898) was a lawyer, postmaster, judge, and Democratic politician who served as the fourth mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Early life

Eli B. Ames was born on August 3, 1820, in Colchester, Vermont. His brother was Alfred Elisha Ames. In 1832, his family moved to Ohio, later relocating to Ottawa, Illinois. While there, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1842.

Career

Ames moved to Hennepin, Illinois, where he served as postmaster and later as a probate judge.

Ames served in the Illinois House of Representatives from 1851 to 1852. After his term in the Illinois General Assembly, he worked as an aide to Joel Aldrich Mattesona. In 1855, he was appointed to the American consulate in Hamburg, Germany as consul. While serving as consul, he negotiated a postal treaty with Germany.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Eli B. Ames” is american lawyer and politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ames, American and lawyer, not as a finished interpretation.

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—1820, 1898, 1832, 1842—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Ames, American and lawyer is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american lawyer and politician” 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

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 Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21028365. The first chronological checks are 1820, 1898, 1832 and 1842.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. 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.

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  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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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 “Eli B. Ames”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Eli B. Ames primary sources, Eli B. Ames archive and Ames 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 “Eli B. Ames”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Eli B. Ames” 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.