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Maude Sweetman

Washington State 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 authorityQ113554980
Source-derived summary

Maude Sweetman (October 31, 1877 – June 19, 1943) was an American politician who served as a member of the Washington House of Representatives from 1923 to 1931. She represented Washington's 44th legislative district as a Republican, and was the first woman from King County elected to the legislature.

She was the primary sponsor in 1929 of a bill to enact corporate and individual income taxes, which passed both houses of the legislature and would have gone to the voters had it not been ruled unconstitutional by the Washington Supreme Court. She served on numerous committees in the legislature, including as chair of the State Charitable Institutions Committee in the 1929 to 1931 term. She was one of a number of important women legislators who received political assistance from Belle Reeves, a fellow legislator and later Washington's first female Secretary of State.

In 1927, after three terms in the legislature, she published her book What Price Politics: the Inside Story of Washington State Politics.

She was married and had three sons.

References

Further reading

Article: “Mrs. Sweetman Died June 19 in San Francisco,” The Seattle Times, November 25, 1943

Book: Sweetman, Maude. What Price Politics: The Inside Story of Washington State Politics.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Maude Sweetman” as washington State politician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

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—1877, 1943, 1923, 1931—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1877-10-31. The account is most persuasive where Maude, Sweetman and Washington can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as washington State politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

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 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q113554980. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1877, 1943, 1923 and 1931.

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 “Maude Sweetman”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Maude Sweetman primary sources, Maude Sweetman archive and Maude 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 “Maude Sweetman”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Maude Sweetman” 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.