Bagnall, James

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Marianne G. Morrow, “BAGNALL, JAMES (James Douglas),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 8, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bagnall_james_8E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Printer, publisher, politician, and office holder; baptized 16 Nov. 1783 in Shelburne, N.S., son of Samuel Bagnall and Elizabeth Whitehouse; m. 22 Aug. 1815 Anna Matilda Gardiner in Charlottetown, and they had at least three sons and four daughters; d. 20 June 1855 in Bedeque, P.E.I.
    • James Bagnall’s parents, loyalists from New York, went from Shelburne, where James was born, to St John’s (Prince Edward) Island probably in 1787. Unable to get an expected land grant, Samuel, a carpenter and cabinet-maker, settled his family in Charlottetown where from 1788 to 1795 he was deputy sheriff and jailer, the jail being in his own house.
    • Bagnall returned with a press in 1804 to set up shop on an island with fewer than 7,000 inhabitants, many of whom could not read, distributed over wilderness land in small communities. Appointed king’s printer on 25 December by Lieutenant Governor Edmund Fanning with a salary of £60, he began publishing his first newspaper, the Royal Herald, a month later. Because money was scarce he announced that “country produce and furs will be taken as payment from those who cannot make it convenient to pay cash.”
    • Bagnall, who “felt a strong desire” to promote the Island’s settlement and prosperity, ran for a Georgetown seat in the general election of November 1806. He attributed the successful result to the influence of the Loyal Electors, a political society formed during the election. Although many of the founding members were loyalists or their descendants (Samuel Bagnall was its first president and meetings were held in his tavern).
    • Bagnall’s problems as a government printer were compounded by his interest in political action. Although he had lost in the hotly contested general election of 1812 he won a by-election in 1813. An active member during the next session of the assembly, in 1817, Bagnall was defeated in a general election the following year. He was chosen clerk of the assembly in 1818, a position he retained in the brief session of 1820, which was the last on the Island during Lieutenant Governor Smith’s term of office. When Smith’s successor John Ready called an election for the fall of 1824 Palmer was defeated and Bagnall was left with few friends in the new assembly. Attending the January 1825 session as clerk of the former assembly, Bagnall found himself not only displaced as clerk, a position which had paid well, but also replaced as printer of the assembly Journal by his former apprentice J. D. Haszard, who had supported the movement for Smith’s recall.
    • Though James Bagnall had been a conscientious member of the assembly working for the interests of the people, his major accomplishment was as a printer who kept the small colony informed of the issues that influenced its life by printing the assembly Journal, the laws, and his newspapers.
  • Son of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=12101
  • Find A Grave: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/260214515/james-bagnall