James Shand
Australian politician

Major James Barclay Shand VD (1870 – 21 December 1944) was an Australian politician.
Born at Pyrmont to joiner George Sand and Elizabeth, née Burns, Shand was educated at Fort Street Public School before working as a clerk with Harrison, Jones and Devlin, a wool and stock firm. He married Ann Donald in 1896, with whom he had three children, and served on Drummoyne Council from 1905 to 1911.
He eventually became secretary of Harrison, Jones and Devlin and oversaw its amalgamation with Goldsbrough Mort & Co. After visiting the United Kingdom and Europe in 1914, he enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force in 1915, and served with the Mining Corps until he was invalided home in 1917 and stationed at Molongolo Concentration Camp as the quartermaster. In 1922, he received the Volunteer Officers' Decoration. He was secretary of the Master Butchers' Federation until 1926.
In 1926, Shand was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as a member for Cumberland, representing the Nationalist Party. When single-member districts were re-introduced in 1927 he was elected the member for Hornsby. He was an honorary minister from 1935 to 1938, but began to fall out with what had become the United Australia Party.
“James Shand” enters the record as australian politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what James, Shand and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“James Shand” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, James, Shand and Australian provides the most credible route into that argument.
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 7, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6142962. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1870, 1944, 1896 and 1905.
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.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “James Shand”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow James Shand primary sources, James Shand archive and James research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “James Shand”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “James Shand” 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.