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Victoria Tolbert

First Lady of Liberia (1916-1997)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ66385092 ↗
Source-derived summary

Victoria Anna David Tolbert (née David; 12 July 1916 – November 1997) was the First Lady of Liberia from 1971 to 1980.

Early life and education

Victoria Anna David was born on 12 July 1916 in Robertsport, Grand Cape Mount County, Liberia. Her father, Isaac David, was an American immigrant from Little Rock, Arkansas. Her mother, Rosaline Houston was a native Liberian of Vai ethnicity. Victoria was given a basic education by the Episcopal missionary Margarita S. Ridgely at the House of Bethany. Victoria later trained to become an elementary school teacher. She started teaching kindergarten at a mission school in 1934, and it was there she met William Tolbert.

Marriage

Victoria married William Tolbert on 12 May 1936 in Robertsport. Not long after the marriage, the couple moved to Bensonville, where she continued her work as a teacher, and William began working as a government paymaster. In 1951, William was elected as Vice President of Liberia.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Victoria Tolbert” is first Lady of Liberia (1916-1997). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Victoria, Tolbert and First, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1916, 1997, 1971, 1980—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1916-07-12. For this dossier, Victoria, Tolbert and First is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “first Lady of Liberia (1916-1997)” 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

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q66385092. VIAF identifies the subject as 6334162301493120270006. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1916, 1997, 1971 and 1980.

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.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Victoria Tolbert”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Victoria Tolbert primary sources, Victoria Tolbert archive and Victoria 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 “Victoria Tolbert”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Victoria Tolbert” 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.