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John Chew Thomas

American politician (1764-1836)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ577114 ↗
Source-derived summary

John Chew Thomas (October 15, 1764 – May 10, 1836) was an American politician who served as a Federalist member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Maryland's 2nd congressional district from 1799 to 1801. He also served as a member of the Maryland State House of Delegates from 1796 to 1797.

Born in Perryville, Maryland, Thomas attended private schools and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia in 1783. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in Philadelphia on December 15, 1787, but did not engage in extensive practice. Around 1789 he moved to "Fairland" in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. After his stint in the Maryland House of Delegates, he was elected as a Federalist to the Sixth Congress, and served from March 4, 1799, to March 3, 1801, but declined to be a candidate for reelection in 1801.

In 1810, Thomas sold Fairland, freed most of his slaves, and returned to Pennsylvania, where he lived until his death near Leiperville. He is interred in the Chester Friends Meetinghouse Cemetery in Chester, Pennsylvania.

References

United States Congress. "John Chew Thomas (id: T000173)".

Editorial summary

“John Chew Thomas” enters the record as american politician (1764-1836). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, Chew and Thomas can confirm, complicate or overturn.

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—1764, 1836, 1799, 1801—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1764-10-15. Its strongest next move is a source search built around John, Chew and Thomas.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“John Chew Thomas” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, John, Chew and Thomas provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q577114. VIAF identifies the subject as 66316329. The Library of Congress control number is nr90005292. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1764, 1836, 1799 and 1801.

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.

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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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  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “John Chew Thomas” 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.