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Grenville Beardsley

American lawyer (1898–1960)

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ5607505 ↗
Source-derived summary

Grenville Beardsley II (January 12, 1898 – June 3, 1960) was Attorney General of Illinois from 1959 to 1960.

Early life and education

Beardsley was born in Salem, Iowa, the son of Frank Grenville Beardsley, Ph.D, a Congregationalist minister, evangelist, and author. He attended Knox College and Illinois Wesleyan University. He graduated from Knox College in 1917. After World War I, he completed his legal education at the John Marshall Law School.

Career

After the war, he graduated with a Juris Doctor degree from John Marshall Law School in Chicago. He became active in Illinois Republican politics, and between World War I and World War II he ran for several offices, including the State Senate and Illinois Attorney General.

After the war, he returned home to his family in Chicago to practice law. He remained in the Army Reserve, was commandant of JAG officer's school at Northwestern University, and was promoted to full colonel. Beardsley remained active in politics and ran for several offices, including State's Attorney.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Grenville Beardsley” is american lawyer (1898–1960). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Grenville, Beardsley and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1898, 1960, 1959, 1917—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1898-01-12. For this dossier, Grenville, Beardsley and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american lawyer (1898–1960)” 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 Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5607505. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1898, 1960, 1959 and 1917.

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 “Grenville Beardsley”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Grenville Beardsley primary sources, Grenville Beardsley archive and Grenville 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 “Grenville Beardsley”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Grenville Beardsley” 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.