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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Joseph E. Dillon

American 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 revisionMay 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ6282784 ↗
Source-derived summary

Joseph E. Dillon (March 18, 1921 – April 17, 1990) was the mayor of Saint Paul, Minnesota from 1954 to 1960. During his tenure, in 1955, Saint Paul and Nagasaki became the first sister city pairing of an Asian city and an American city. A friend of Hubert Humphrey, Dillon campaigned for Humphrey during his 1960 presidential campaign.

Editorial summary

“Joseph E. Dillon” enters the record as american politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Joseph, Dillon and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

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—1921, 1990, 1954, 1960—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Joseph, Dillon and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Joseph E. Dillon” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Joseph, Dillon and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

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 May 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6282784. The first chronological checks are 1921, 1990, 1954 and 1960.

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 “Joseph E. Dillon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Joseph E. Dillon primary sources, Joseph E. Dillon archive and Joseph 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 “Joseph E. Dillon”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Joseph E. Dillon” 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.