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George Alfred Joy Ricker

American engineer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 11, 2024
Entity authorityQ5536169 ↗
Source-derived summary

George Alfred Joy Ricker (June 30, 1863 - November 3, 1933) was a civil engineer in Buffalo, New York who built the Niagara Falls Gorge Railway and supervised the construction of the Storm King Highway.

Biography

He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on June 30, 1863. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1880 he moved to Buffalo, New York with his parents. In 1885, he became an assistant engineer on the Buffalo section of the Erie Railroad. In 1886, he was made assistant civil engineer on the Northern Pacific Railroad at Helena, Montana. He died in 1933.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “George Alfred Joy Ricker” as american engineer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around George, Alfred and Ricker.

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—1863, 1933, 1880, 1885—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1863-06-30. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with George, Alfred and Ricker providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “George Alfred Joy Ricker”, the useful work is to connect “american engineer” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

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 Mar 11, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q5536169. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1863, 1933, 1880 and 1885.

Critical limits

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.

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 “George Alfred Joy Ricker”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow George Alfred Joy Ricker primary sources, George Alfred Joy Ricker archive and George 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

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  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “George Alfred Joy Ricker” 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.