Thomas Storrow Brown | |
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![]() Thomas Storrow Brown in L'opinion publique, Vol. 4, no. 21, p. 245 (21 May 1873) | |
Born | St. Andrews, New Brunswick | July 7, 1803
Died | November 26, 1888 85) Montreal, Quebec | (aged
Occupation(s) | journalist, writer |
Thomas Storrow Brown (July 7, 1803 – November 26, 1888) was a Canadian journalist, writer, orator, and revolutionary in Lower Canada (present-day Quebec). [1]
Born in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, the son of Henry Barlow Brown and Rebecca Appleton, as a young man in 1818 [2] he moved to Montreal, Lower Canada. Once there, he found work and with his savings eventually went into the hardware business. His operation encountered financial difficulties and closed leaving Brown to find other employment.
A member of the Unitarian Church, Thomas Brown was an advocate for both social and political reform, supporting the concept of responsible government in which the members of the Legislative Council of Quebec would be appointed by the Legislative Assembly's majority party. Brown also worked to improve social conditions through aid to the poor. Influenced by the republican form of government in the United States, over time his frustrations with the government of Great Britain saw him join the Montreal Vindicator newspaper in 1832 at the invitation of his friend Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan. Following the death of founder Daniel Tracey, O'Callaghan had been appointed the paper's new editor and with Brown, they continued to espouse the former owner's radical views. Their attacks were especially harsh against the Governor of the Colony, Lord Gosford despite the fact that he had ordered the dissolution of the British Rifle Corps in January 1836.
In 1833, Brown's wife, Jane Hughes, died. By this time, Brown had moved firmly from a moderate who sought to reform the political system, to a radical wanting to fundamentally alter Canadian society. In 1837 he participated in the Lower Canada Rebellion and was head of the military faction of the rebel group, the Société des Fils de la Liberté, that openly advocating revolution. In November, Brown was wounded and partially blinded in one eye during the street fight between the Société des Fils de la Liberté and the Doric Club but nevertheless, in December he still fought against government forces at the Battle of Saint-Charles. Defeated, he escaped to the United States where he worked as a journalist in Florida. In 1844, he was granted an amnesty and returned to Montreal where Charles Wilson gave him a job in his hardware store. Brown married Hester Livingston in 1860 and a little more than a year later was given administrative posts in the government. Thomas Storrow Brown died at his home in Montreal in 1888 at the age of eighty-five.
Louis-Joseph Papineau, born in Montreal, Quebec, was a politician, lawyer, and the landlord of the seigneurie de la Petite-Nation. He was the leader of the reformist Patriote movement before the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837–1838. His father was Joseph Papineau, also a politician in Quebec. Papineau was the eldest of eight children and was the grandfather of the journalist Henri Bourassa, founder of the newspaper Le Devoir.
The Lower Canada Rebellion, commonly referred to as the Patriots' War in French, is the name given to the armed conflict in 1837–38 between rebels and the colonial government of Lower Canada. Together with the simultaneous rebellion in the neighbouring colony of Upper Canada, it formed the Rebellions of 1837–38.
This section of the Timeline of Quebec history concerns the events in British North America relating to what is the present day province of Quebec, Canada between the time of the Constitutional Act of 1791 and the Act of Union 1840.
The Société des Fils de la Liberté was a paramilitary organization founded in August 1837 in Lower Canada.
The Parti canadien or Parti patriote was a primarily francophone political party in what is now Quebec founded by members of the liberal elite of Lower Canada at the beginning of the 19th century. Its members were made up of liberal professionals and small-scale merchants, including François Blanchet, Pierre-Stanislas Bédard, John Neilson, Jean-Thomas Taschereau, James Stuart, Louis Bourdages, Denis-Benjamin Viger, Daniel Tracey, Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Andrew Stuart and Louis-Joseph Papineau.
Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, was an Irish doctor, historian and journalist.
John Neilson was a journalist, publisher and politician in Lower Canada. Born in Scotland, he emigrated to Lower Canada in 1791 at age 15, to work in his older brother's publishing company in Quebec City. On his brother's death a few years later, he inherited the business. Neilson became one of the leading publishers and booksellers in Lower Canada and in Upper Canada, selling books in both French and English. He was the editor of the newspaper La Gazette de Québec / The Quebec Gazette, published in French and in English.
Denis-Benjamin Viger was a 19th-century politician, lawyer, and newspaper publisher in Lower Canada, who served as joint premier of the Province of Canada for over two years. A leader in the Patriote movement, he was a strong French-Canadian nationalist, but a social conservative in terms of the seigneurial system and the position of the Catholic church in Lower Canada.
The Battle of Saint-Denis was fought on November 23, 1837, between British colonial authorities under Lieutenant-Colonel Gore and Patriote rebels in Lower Canada as part of the Lower Canada Rebellion. The Patriotes were led by Wolfred Nelson. Gore was sent to quell the uprising in the Richelieu River valley in conjunction with a force led by Lieutenant-Colonel George Wetherall. Gore was the first to arrive at a Patriote-held site. Nelson had organized the defence with most of the well-armed rebels within a stone house that overlooked the road. Gore, accompanied by only one cannon, attempted to take the stone house three times, with the cannon providing ineffective fire. Another attempt to flank the house to the left failed when Gore's soldiers encountered the less well-armed militia. Running out of ammunition, the British retreated. This marked the only Patriote victory in 1837, as this battle was followed by two defeats at Saint-Charles and Saint-Eustache.
The Battle of Saint-Charles was fought on 25 November 1837 between the Government of Lower Canada, supported by the United Kingdom, and Patriote rebels. Following the opening Patriote victory of the Lower Canada Rebellion at the Battle of Saint-Denis, British troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Wetherall advanced from the south on the Patriote stronghold of Saint-Charles in the Richelieu valley. On 25 November 1837 they engaged the Patriote forces under the command of Thomas Storrow Brown. After a two-hour battle, the Government of Lower Canada was victorious.
Étienne Parent was a Canadian journalist, politician and government official. A French-Canadian nationalist, he wrote extensively on political theory and governance during the 1820s and 1830s in various newspapers, particularly Le Canadien, of which he was editor. He was attracted to theories of constitutional governance based on the British constitution, and opposed annexation to the United States. Born to farming parents, he spent most of his adult life in the French-Canadian political and social elites.
Amable Berthelot was a Canadien lawyer, author and political figure. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada and later to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. Trained as a lawyer, he was an avid book-collector, at one point having a personal library of some fifteen hundred volumes. He did not support those who took up arms during the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837–1838. He never married, but adopted two children, a boy and a girl. His daughter married Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, later co-premier of the Province of Canada. He was a literary mentor to François-Xavier Garneau.
Jacob De Witt was a businessman, banker and political figure in Lower Canada and Canada East, Province of Canada. Beginning in the hardware trade, he expanded into steamship transportation on the River St. Lawrence and then banking. He was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada and generally supported the Parti patriote, but did not participate in the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837. After the union of Lower Canada and Upper Canada into the Province of Canada, he was elected to the new Legislative Assembly. He initially supported the reform measures of Louis-Hippolyte LaFontaine, but gradually became more radical, ending his political career as member of the Parti rouge and calling for the voluntary annexation of Canada to the United States. He continued in business, particularly banking, until his death in 1859.
The Assembly of the Six Counties was an assembly of Patriote leaders and approximately 6,000 followers held in Saint-Charles, Lower Canada on October 23 and October 24, 1837, despite the June 15 Proclamation of the government forbidding public assemblies.
The patriotes movement was a political movement that existed in Lower Canada from the turn of the 19th century to the Patriote Rebellion of 1837 and 1838 and the subsequent Act of Union of 1840. The partisan embodiment of the movement was the Parti patriote, which held many seats in the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada.
This Bibliography of Louis-Joseph Papineau, is an incomplete list of all things written by or published about Louis-Joseph Papineau in either French or English, original or translation.
Jean-Louis Beaudry was a Canadian entrepreneur and politician. Beaudry served as mayor of Montreal three times, from 1862 to 1866, from 1877 to 1879, and from 1881 to 1885 for a total time served as mayor of ten years.
The following is an incomplete bibliography of the 1837-1838 insurrections in Lower Canada in the English and French languages, by publication date and document type.
Louis-Joseph-Amédée Papineau, or Amédée Papineau (1819–1903) was a writer and Québecois patriot and present at the meeting at which the Société des Fils de la Liberté was founded. He was the eldest son of Louis-Joseph Papineau, a leader in the Rebellion of 1837 in Lower Canada, and was involved in the rebellion himself. His father was forced to flee, and Amédée followed him to Saratoga Springs, New York. Between 1837 and 1842, he drew up the first four books of his personal journal as Journal d'un Fils de la Liberté in which he chronicled the events of the 1837 rebellion and his life in exile.
The Battle of Baker's Farm took place in Lower Canada on November 8, 1838, during the Patriot's War. It was the first and last military success of the Patriotes in the campaign of 1838. Eight hundred Patriotes gathered on a farm near Sainte-Martine, Quebec and fought off several attacks by Loyalist volunteers. After news of the defeat of Patriotes forces at the Battle of Odelltown spread, the massed Patriotes dispersed before the arrival of British troops.