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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Sandy Cowan

Canadian lacrosse player (1879-1915)

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 revisionOct 26, 2024
Entity authorityQ964320 ↗
Source-derived summary

Alexander Cowan (February 5, 1879 – January 8, 1915) was a Canadian lacrosse player who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics. In 1904 he was member of the Shamrock Lacrosse Team which won the gold medal in the lacrosse tournament.

Editorial summary

“Sandy Cowan” enters the record as canadian lacrosse player (1879-1915). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sandy, Cowan and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1879, 1915, 1904—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1879-02-05. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Sandy, Cowan and Canadian.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Sandy Cowan” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sandy, Cowan and Canadian 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 Oct 26, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q964320. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1915 and 1904.

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 “Sandy Cowan”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sandy Cowan primary sources, Sandy Cowan archive and Sandy 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 “Sandy Cowan”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  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 “Sandy Cowan” 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.