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Research dossier · People & Ideas

Valentine Howe

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 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ116196793 ↗
Source-derived summary

Valentine Howe Sr. (c. 1841–1904) was an African American builder and state legislator in North Carolina. He was elected in 1887 to the North Carolina House of Representatives, after defeating Alfred Moore Waddell. Hailing from a prominent family of carpenters and builders, Howe served as an alderman, vestryman, volunteer with the Cape Fear Fire Company, and was an Odd Fellow. He died at age 63 in 1904.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Valentine Howe” as american 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—1841, 1904, 1887—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Valentine, Howe and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american 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 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q116196793. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1841, 1904 and 1887.

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

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Valentine Howe” 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.