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Roy Winfield Harper

American judge

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ7373515 ↗
Source-derived summary

Roy Winfield Harper (July 26, 1905 – February 13, 1994) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri.

Education and career

Born on July 26, 1905, in Gibson, Missouri, Harper received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1929 from the University of Missouri and a Bachelor of Laws in 1929 from the University of Missouri School of Law. He was an attorney with the Real Estate Appraisal Division of Shell Oil Company from 1929 to 1931. He was in private practice in Steele, Missouri from 1931 to 1934 and in Caruthersville, Missouri, from 1934 to 1947. Harper was a major in the United States Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945.

Federal judicial service

Harper received a recess appointment from President Harry S. Truman on August 7, 1947, to a joint seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri vacated by Judge John Caskie Collet. President Truman nominated Harper to a judgeship on November 24, 1947, but the United States Senate did not confirm his nomination, so his service terminated on December 19, 1947. However, President Truman gave him a second recess appointment on December 20, 1947. The Senate still did not confirm his nomination, so his service terminated on June 22, 1948. The same day, President Truman gave him yet a third recess appointment, and Truman nominated him again January 13, 1949.

Editorial summary

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

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1905, 1994, 1929, 1931—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1905-07-26. For this dossier, Winfield, Harper and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american judge” 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

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7373515. VIAF identifies the subject as 77938410. The Library of Congress control number is n90649561. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1905, 1994, 1929 and 1931.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. 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.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Roy Winfield Harper” 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.