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Lewis Dent

American politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2025
Entity authorityQ97356627
Source-derived summary

Lewis T. Dent (also known as Louis Dent, March 3, 1823 – March 22, 1874) was an American

explorer, judge, and politician. He was the brother-in-law of Ulysses S. Grant.

Dent was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1823, the son of Frederick Dent and Ellen Wrenshall. He was one of four older brothers of Julia Dent Grant, the future First Lady. Dent was considered to be well-educated, having attended the best schools in St. Louis and studying law. In 1846, Dent served as a civilian clerk to paymaster Major James H. Cloud who accompanied the Mormon Battalion to California during the Mexican-American War. Lewis and his brother John's names were found etched at Signature Rock in Oklahoma.

Dent later married a daughter of Judge Baine.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lewis Dent” is american politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lewis, Dent and American, not as a finished interpretation.

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—1823, 1874, 1846—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Lewis, Dent and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american politician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

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 Aug 31, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q97356627. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1823, 1874 and 1846.

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 “Lewis Dent”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Lewis Dent primary sources, Lewis Dent archive and Lewis 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 “Lewis Dent”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Lewis Dent” 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.