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Hal B. Burton

Arkansas politician

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 revisionJul 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ112063612 ↗
Source-derived summary

Hal B. Burton was an American state legislator in Arkansas. He represented Jefferson County, Arkansas in the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1887. He was a Republican and served one term.

In 1880 he was a farmer; in the 1890s, he worked as a merchant and saloon manager. In 1908, he was listed as a porter, in the city directory of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and may have died there between 1910 and 1920. His third wife was documented as a sower.

He was the great-great-grandfather of actor LeVar Burton. On a 2024 episode of the PBS program, Finding Your Roots, featuring LeVar Burton, it was noted that Hal Burton was described in one contemporary newspaper account as a "gay lothario" and accused of being a womanizer.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hal B. Burton” as arkansas politician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

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—1887, 1880, 1908, 1910—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Burton, Arkansas and politician can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as arkansas politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

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 Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q112063612. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1887, 1880, 1908 and 1910.

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 “Hal B. Burton”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Hal B. Burton primary sources, Hal B. Burton archive and Burton 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 “Hal B. Burton”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Hal B. Burton” 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.