CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Lacy Thornburg

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 revisionJul 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ6469187 ↗
Source-derived summary

Lacy Herman Thornburg (born December 20, 1929) is an American lawyer and retired United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina. He served as the North Carolina attorney general from 1985 to 1993.

Education and career

Thornburg was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina in 1952. He received a Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina School of Law in 1954. He was in the United States Army as a Private First Class from 1947 to 1948. He was in private practice of law in Webster, North Carolina from 1954 to 1967. He was a Member of the North Carolina House of Representatives from 1961 to 1966. He was a Special judge of the Superior Court of the 30th Judicial District of North Carolina from 1967 to 1971. He was a Resident judge of the Superior Court of the 30th Judicial District of North Carolina from 1971 to 1983.

Editorial summary

“Lacy Thornburg” enters the record as american politician. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lacy, Thornburg 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—1929, 1985, 1993, 1952—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1929-12-20. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Lacy, Thornburg and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

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

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 Q6469187. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929, 1985, 1993 and 1952.

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 “Lacy Thornburg”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lacy Thornburg primary sources, Lacy Thornburg archive and Lacy 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 “Lacy Thornburg”?
  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 “Lacy Thornburg” 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.