HAGERMAN, CHRISTOPHER ALEXANDER, 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.
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. He evinced – by temperament more than by design – the aggressiveness lacking in a John Macaulay* and outwardly less evident in a John Beverley Robinson*. William Lyon Mackenzie*’s biographer Charles Lindsey* thought Hagerman showed “a disposition to carry the abuse of privilege as far as the most despotic sovereign had ever carried the abuse of prerogative.” Charles Morrison Durand, a Hamilton lawyer prosecuted by Hagerman in the aftermath of the rebellion of 1837, depicted him as a “grim old bulldog.” If Macaulay was the back-room boy of Upper Canadian administrations from Sir Peregrine Maitland*’s to Sir George Arthur*’s, Hagerman was the bully-boy.
Unlike contemporaries such as Robinson, John Macaulay, Archibald McLean*, and Jonas Jones, all of whom moved easily, and naturally, into positions of influence and power, 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. 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
Within his closely knit family, young Christopher had an especial fondness for his brother Daniel and his sister Maria. From his father, it seems, he derived his keen sense of the loyalist legacy and an uncompromising adherence to the Church of England; it was perhaps symbolic that he had been baptized by John Langhorn*, one of the church’s staunchest defenders. A boyhood acquaintance, J. Neilson, recalled to Egerton Ryerson* in 1873 that Christopher had “not . . . much early learning,” and certainly, as historian Sydney Francis Wise has convincingly shown, he was never a pupil of John Strachan*. Hagerman embarked in 1807 upon a career in the law – one of the surest avenues to preferment and a comfortable life – as a student in his father’s Kingston office. He would be admitted to the bar in Hilary term 1815.
His personal qualities tended to set him apart. In November 1810, from York (Toronto), Robinson wrote to John Macaulay in Kingston: “We have been favored for two or three weeks with the company of the enlightened Christopher Hagerman a Youth whose bashfulness will never stand in his way – and who you may undertake to Say will never be prevented by embarrassments from displaying his natural talents or acquired information to the best advantage – After all, tho’, he has a good heart, and not a mean capacity, in short he is not So great a fool as people take him to be.” There was, as Robinson’s letter catches, a bravado and also an air of self-satisfaction to Hagerman, and they were as discernible in the young man as they would be characteristic of the older man.
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 1833 he would write that he had “had the good fortune to attract the notice and obtain the patronage” of Governor Sir George Prevost*, who was in Kingston between May and September 1813. Hagerman’s rise in local and provincial society dates from that period. He carried dispatches for Major-General Francis de Rottenburg*, commander of the troops in Upper Canada, in August 1813. The following November he served with credit as Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Wanton Morrison*’s aide-de-camp at the battle of Crysler’s Farm. In December he was appointed provincial aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-General Gordon Drummond*, Rottenburg’s successor, with the provincial rank of lieutenant-colonel. It was a rather remarkable ascent.