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Christopher Alexander Hagerman, KC (28 March 1792 – 14 May 1847) was a Canadian militia officer, lawyer, administrator, politician and judge.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(March 2017) |
Christopher Alexander Hagerman, KC (28 March 1792 – 14 May 1847) was a Canadian militia officer, lawyer, administrator, politician and judge.
Known during his adult life as 'Handsome Kit', Hagerman was born at the Bay of Quinte, Adolphustown, Ontario, just west of Kingston, Ontario. He was a son of United Empire Loyalist Major Nicholas Hagerman (1761–1819) J.P., and his wife Anne (1758–1847), daughter of John and Mary (Campbell) Fisher, formerly of Killin.
Kit's grandfather, Christopher Hagerman (b.1722), was a Dutch officer in the service of the Prussian Army who had fought for George II of Great Britain at the Battle of Culloden, 1746. Following the Battle of Quebec (1759), he was granted 2,000 acres in Albany, New York. During the American Revolutionary War, Hagerman's father (Nicholas) came under suspicion from the Commission for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies, and went over to the British in 1778.
After relocating to Lower Canada, some 200 km. north of Albany, in 1783, on completion of the war, Nicholas Hagerman signed with Captain Alexander White's company of Associated Loyalists. He settled the next year with his servant in the village of Adolphustown, with the help of local notable Peter Van Alstine. Kit Hagerman's uncle, Judge Alexander Fisher (1756–1830) M.P., of Adolphustown, was the father of Helen and Henrietta Fisher, who married the brothers Thomas Kirkpatrick and Judge Stafford Kirkpatrick respectively.
Hagerman began his legal career in the Kingston, Ontario law offices of his father, one of the first appointed barristers in Upper Canada. [1] He served in his father's militia regiment during the War of 1812, becoming the aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-General Gordon Drummond, who regarded him highly; Hagerman later gained the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Hagerman kept a journal of his war experiences, and this has survived; it is kept in the reserved collection of the City of Toronto Library. Hagerman was called to the bar in 1815. [1]
Having grown up outside John Strachan's inner circle, his military service and association with Drummond gave him the entree he needed for political success. His younger brother Daniel Hagerman followed him into legal and political careers, but died young, at age 27, in 1821.
In 1814 he was appointed Customs Officer at Kingston. [1] He also represented the riding of Kingston for 14 years in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada as the first parliamentarian from Kingston to this legislative body. Hagerman served from 1820 to 1824 in the Eighth Parliament but was defeated for re-election in 1824. He then returned from 1831 to 1834 in the 11th Parliament, from 1835 to 1836 in the 12th Parliament, and from 1836 to 1840 in the 13th Parliament.
In 1826 Hagerman was the defending counsel in the civil lawsuit for the Types Riot. [2]
He was called to the Bar of Upper Canada in 1815, and became a King's Counsel that same year. In 1829 he was appointed solicitor general for the province, and in 1837 he became attorney general. He was the first Canadian-born attorney general of Upper Canada. As such, he had to deal with the Upper Canada Rebellion in late 1837, which unsuccessfully attempted to overthrown the dominance of the Family Compact.
Hagerman was a leading member and advocate of the Family Compact, a staunch conservative, and well known for his loyalty to the Church of England. He was appointed judge for the Court of Queen's Bench in 1841. By this time, Hagerman was one of the most prominent people in Upper Canada, and came into contact with young fellow Kingstonian lawyer John A. Macdonald, also a Conservative, who was then just beginning his own political career. With Hagerman becoming a judge and thus vacating his parliamentary seat, Macdonald won election for Kingston in 1844 into the Province of Canada parliament, and later became Canada's first prime minister in 1867. Young Kingstonian Oliver Mowat, who had apprenticed as a lawyer with Macdonald, was at that time beginning a career which would see him become an Ontario Liberal Party premier for a record 24 years (1872–96).
Hagerman was an excellent and skilled orator and conversationalist, and was certainly a controversial figure. He made trouble for himself with intemperate remarks on many occasions, damaging his career prospects. He was a powerfully built man, both bumptious and aggressive, and on one occasion in Kingston horse-whipped the activist Robert Fleming Gourlay, in 1818. As popular as he was within the Family Compact (he was a particular favourite of John Colborne, 1st Baron Seaton), he was thoroughly hated by those outside the circle.
He was married three times. In 1817 he married Elizabeth, daughter of James Macaulay. In England in 1834, he married Elizabeth Emily, daughter of the British Deputy Secretary at War, William Merry (1762–1855) of Lansdowne Terrace, Cheltenham, by his wife Anne, daughter of Kender Mason of Beel House, Buckinghamshire, the sister of Henry Mason, who married a niece of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson. Two years later, again in England, he married Caroline, daughter of William George Daniel-Tyssen (1773–1838) of Foley House etc., High Sheriff of Kent, by his wife Amelia, only daughter and heiress of Captain John Amhurst R.N., of East Farleigh Court, Kent.
Hagerman died at Toronto in 1847, the father of four children by his first marriage and a daughter by his second.
There was a township of "Hagerman" in Ontario named after him. Township of Hagerman was amalgamated with a few others to form Whitestone, Ontario.
Hagerman's portrait hangs as part of the Kingston civic collection in Memorial Hall, Kingston City Hall; it was restored in 2014. [3]
Hagerman Street, in the Old Industrial Area of Kingston, is named for him and his family.
Sir Alexander Campbell was an English-born, Upper Canadian statesman and a father of Canadian Confederation.
William Lyon Mackenzie was a Scottish Canadian-American journalist and politician. He founded newspapers critical of the Family Compact, a term used to identify elite members of Upper Canada. He represented York County in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada and aligned with Reformers. He led the rebels in the Upper Canada Rebellion; after its defeat, he unsuccessfully rallied American support for an invasion of Upper Canada as part of the Patriot War. Although popular for criticising government officials, he failed to implement most of his policy objectives. He is one of the most recognizable Reformers of the early 19th century.
James FitzGibbon was a British soldier in the War of 1812.
John Strachan was a notable figure in Upper Canada and the first Anglican Bishop of Toronto. He is best known as a political bishop who held many government positions and promoted education from common schools to helping to found the University of Toronto.
John Beverley Robinson was a Canadian politician, lawyer and businessman. He was mayor of Toronto and a provincial and federal member of parliament. He was the fifth Lieutenant Governor of Ontario between the years 1880–1887.
William Allan, JP, was a Scottish Canadian banker, businessman and politician.
Sir John Beverley Robinson, 1st Baronet, was a lawyer, judge and political figure in Upper Canada. He was considered the leader of the Family Compact, a group of families which effectively controlled the early government of Upper Canada.
William Henry Draper was a lawyer, judge, and politician in Upper Canada later Canada West.
Marshall Spring Bidwell was a lawyer and political figure in Upper Canada.
Barnabas Bidwell was an author, teacher and politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, active in Massachusetts and Upper Canada. Educated at Yale, he practised law in western Massachusetts and served as treasurer of Berkshire County. He served in the state legislature as representative and senator, as well as in the United States Congress as spokesman for the administration of Thomas Jefferson. He was effective in defending the administration's positions and passing important legislation, and was the Massachusetts Attorney General from 1807 to 1810, when exaggerated press accounts of irregularities in the Berkshire County books halted his political career and prompted his flight to Upper Canada. Bidwell later paid the $63.18, plus fines, which he attributed to a Berkshire County clerk while he was away on duties in Boston. Nonetheless, the controversy, exaggerated in the press by his Federalist Party enemies, effectively scuppered his potential appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.
John Solomon Cartwright, was a Canadian businessman, lawyer, judge, farmer and political figure in Kingston, Upper Canada. He was a supporter of the Family Compact, an oligarchic group which had dominated control of the government of Upper Canada through their influence with the British governors. He was also a member of the Compact Tory political group, first in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, and then in the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada.
Robert Fleming Gourlay was a Scottish-Canadian writer, political reform activist, and agriculturalist.
James Edward Small, was a lawyer, judge and political figure in Upper Canada and Canada West.
Sir Henry Smith was a Canadian lawyer and political figure. He represented Frontenac County in the Parliament of the Province of Canada, and later in the 1st Parliament of Ontario.
Thomas Kirkpatrick, was a Canadian lawyer and political figure. He represented Frontenac in the 1st Canadian Parliament as a Conservative.
Colonel Sir James Buchanan Macaulay, CB was a lawyer and judge in colonial Canada.
Samuel Peters Jarvis was a Canadian government official in the nineteenth century. He was the Chief Superintendent for the Indian Department in Upper Canada (1837–1845), and he was a member of the Family Compact.
William Jarvis was an office holder, militia officer, and the Connecticut-born head of the Jarvis family in what is now Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
John Ridout (1799-1817), still a teenager when he died in 1817, died in a duel with Samuel Jarvis. Both Ridout and Jarvis were from the small circle of privileged insiders called upon by the Lieutenant Governors of Upper Canada, to fill administrative posts, and sinecures, that William Lyon Mackenzie would later brand the Family Compact. Ridout's father, Thomas Ridout, was Upper Canada's Surveyor General. Jarvis's father, William Jarvis, had been appointed Upper Canada's provincial secretary and registrar.
The Types Riot was the destruction of William Lyon Mackenzie's printing press and movable type by members of the Family Compact on June 8, 1826, in York, Upper Canada. The Family Compact was the ruling elite of Upper Canada who appointed themselves to positions of power within the Upper Canadian government. Mackenzie created the Colonial Advocate newspaper and published editorials in the paper that accused the Family Compact of incompetence and profiteering on corrupt practices, offending the rioters. It is not known who planned the riot, although Samuel Jarvis, a government official, later claimed he organized the event. On the evening of June 8, 9–15 rioters forced their way into the newspaper offices and destroyed property. During the event, Mackenzie's employees tried to get passersby to help stop the rioters. Bystanders refused to help when they saw government officials like William Allan and Stephen Heward were watching the spectacle. When the rioters finished destroying the office, they took cases of type with them and threw them into the nearby bay.
