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John Tobin (Nova Scotia politician)

Canadian 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 revisionDec 1, 2024
Entity authorityQ6260937 ↗
Source-derived summary

John Tobin (1810 – June 9, 1869) was an Irish-born merchant and politician in Nova Scotia. He represented Halifax Township from 1855 to 1859 and Halifax County from 1859 to 1867 in the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia.

He was born in Gowran, County Kilkenny and came to North America in the 1820s, living in Newfoundland for a time and later moving to Halifax. In 1841, he married Catherine Walsh. Tobin established a wholesale and retail firm there. During his time in the assembly, he supported funding for Catholic schools in Nova Scotia. Tobin was defeated when he ran for a seat in the House of Commons in 1867 as a pro-Confederation candidate. He died in Halifax, apparently by suicide although the coroner's report was worded somewhat ambiguously. He was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Halifax.

References

Fleming, David B (1976).

Editorial summary

“John Tobin (Nova Scotia politician)” enters the record as canadian politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, Tobin and Nova 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—1810, 1869, 1855, 1859—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1810. Its strongest next move is a source search built around John, Tobin and Nova.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“John Tobin (Nova Scotia politician)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, John, Tobin and Nova 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 Dec 1, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q6260937. VIAF identifies the subject as 40840022. The Library of Congress control number is n85368593. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1810, 1869, 1855 and 1859.

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.

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  • Building a first chronology
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

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  2. Expand the search: follow John Tobin (Nova Scotia politician) primary sources, John Tobin (Nova Scotia politician) archive and John 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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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “John Tobin (Nova Scotia politician)” 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.