Hagerman, Christopher Alexander

  • DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY ARTICLE: Robert L. Fraser, “HAGERMAN, CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 7, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–. https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/hagerman_christopher_alexander_7E.html
  • DCB profile notes:
    • Militia officer, lawyer, office holder, politician, and judge; b. 28 March 1792 in Adolphustown Township, Upper Canada, son of Nicholas Hagerman and Anne Fisher; m. first 26 March 1817, in Kingston, Elizabeth Macaulay, daughter of James Macaulay, and they had three daughters and one son; m. secondly 17 April 1834, in London, England, Elizabeth Emily Merry, and they had one daughter; m. thirdly 1846 Caroline Tysen, and they had no issue; d. 14 May 1847 in Toronto.
    • Hagerman started down life’s path as something of an outsider – lacking what Robinson termed “interest,” by which he meant a patron. It was not that Hagerman had no advantages; it was just that he did not have as many as others. His background was respectable and loyal. His father Nicholas Hagerman was a New Yorker of Dutch ancestry who “took an early and an Active part in favour of the British Government” during the American revolution. In 1783 he emigrated to Quebec, and the following year he settled on the Bay of Quinte in what became Adolphustown Township. He acquired a modest stature in the community as a militia captain and justice of the peace. More important professionally was his appointment in 1797 as one of Upper Canada’s first barristers
    • Few individuals in Upper Canada’s at times turbulent political history provoked such extreme hostility as Christopher Alexander Hagerman. Among the men with whom historians have commonly associated him, he was the most obdurate in his defence of church and state.
    • His advance in society was effected through the good graces of outsiders, the military men who came to the province during the war years, stayed briefly, and cared little for local cliques. At the outbreak of the War of 1812 Hagerman enlisted as an officer in his father’s militia company.
    • In June 1818, in a minor way, he helped set the stage for the charge of seditious libel against the Scottish agitator Robert Gourlay. Later that month he confronted Gourlay in the streets of Kingston brandishing a whip, which he used to good effect on the unarmed Scot. Arrested and subsequently released, he had given Kingstonians a visible demonstration of where he stood politically. A now prominent local, Hagerman was elected to the House of Assembly for the riding of Kingston on 26 and 27 June 1820. He defeated, by 119 votes to 94, George Herchmer Markland, a pupil of Strachan’s, a friend of Robinson and John Macaulay.
    • Hagerman had been useful to successive administrators from Maitland to Arthur. He enjoyed his greatest intimacy with Colborne, who would, however, in time seek out Robinson as a confidant. Hagerman was, perhaps, especially in the late 1830s, a convenient symbol of the uncompromising courtier in what was then known as the “family compact” – certainly Francis Hincks’s Examinerportrayed him as such – but he lacked the talents and intellect which made Robinson, Strachan, Macaulay, and Jones more important. His forte was sound and fury and more often than not it got him into trouble.
  • Son of Proven Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory –https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=3447
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