Talk:Joseph Levien

Untitled

Article under development with another Wikipaedian working on former Mayors of Nelson, New Zealand. May take a short time to build up to full standard as information is scarce due to the time period.

Ok, will take a look in 2-3 days at the article. Kante4 (talk) 03:34, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Article name

Contemporary sources always talk of Joseph Levien and sometimes of Joseph H. Levien. His company was called J. Levien & Co. I thus conclude that he wasn't known by his full name and will thus move this article to Joseph Levien. Schwede66 17:47, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Notability

During the process of vetting the DYK nomination of this article, notability has been queried. WP:POLITICIAN is the relevant policy, and there it says: "Generally speaking, mayors of cities of at least regional importance are likely to meet this criterion..." There is some argument whether Nelson became a city in 1858 or in 1874, but in either case, it was a city when they started electing mayors. Furthermore, Nelson was the seat of the provincial government until the abolition of this level of government on 1 January 1876, so it also meets that criterion. Hence, notability of the individual mayors is met. Schwede66 22:07, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• What was the population of Nelson at the time? Abductive (reasoning) 22:18, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

My understanding is that cities could be proclaimed when the population exceeded 20,000 inhabitants. That said, I couldn't find anything that sets this threshold in what I thought are the two relevant pieces of legislation, the Municipal Corporations Act 1867 and Municipal Corporations Act 1876. The first Act lists Nelson as a town, and the second Act shows (on page 64) the date Nelson was constituted (30 March 1874). In case you are looking at voting numbers to derive an idea of population size, the suffrage was for males of full age (21 years). Schwede66 22:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok, I've found census data, and my understanding wasn't right. This article gives some background and another page shows a graph with population growth. The Nelson population was 5,662 and 6,604 in 1874 and 1878, respectively. Mind you, that's big for New Zealand at the time. In 1853, when New Zealand held the first elections, we had one Lower House in Auckland for the country, and 6 provincial governments dotted around the place. All seven of those houses were as much of a copy of Westminster as possible, for a total European population of 30,000 at the time. 7 Westminsters for 30,000 - that's quite impressive, isn't it? Schwede66 23:20, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I recall reading a paper where it stated Nelson gained city status because it had a Cathedral and Bishop. Whether or not this was factual, I'd need to research further.NealeFamily (talk) 00:31, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• WP:GNG asks for "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject of the article". Given that numerous online sources have been found about a person from the 19th century, there is probably ample additional offline coverage. Adabow (talk · contribs) 03:13, 9 December 2010 (UTC)