16 THE RADICAL ARCHIVIST

BY STEPHEN Mc ERLEANE

Edmund Bailey From agitator to historian: the work of O’Callaghan, ca. 1880. Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan—child of Ireland, political organizer in Canada, and finally a New Yorker—gave the state NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE its earliest history as a Dutch colony.

n early November 1837, English-language voice of the the province of Lower largely Francophone party— Canada was on the verge demanded, "JUSTICE TO ALL of rebellion. Tensions CLASSES; MONOPOLIES AND between the Patriote Party, PRIVILEGES TO NONE." Ithe dominant power in the The disorder in the streets Legislative Assembly, and the of Montreal on November 6 colony’s British administrators spelled the end for The had reached the point of open Vindicator when an angry mob insurrection. The Patriotes of Tory supporters ransacked demanded a representative and destroyed its office and as an form of government that Edmund O'Callaghan, its influen- Owen largely emulated the populist, editor, went into hiding. An tial historian, O'Callaghan anti-monopoly ideas of Irish immigrant, physician, archivist, transla- earned enough American Jacksonian democ- and dedicated member of the tor, and documentary editor. money to provide his children racy. Their demands included Patriote party, O’Callaghan with a good education. We popular election of the had been the newspaper’s Populist in the Making can surmise that the anti- members of the Legislative editor for five years. Foremost O'Callaghan was born around English, pro-Catholic ideology Council, who were appointed in his mind as he fled must 1800 in Mallow, a small market to which he was exposed in by the governor general, have been his personal safety town in County Cork, Ireland. his youth played a role in and a broad reduction in the and future preparations for He and his five siblings lived in shaping O’Callaghan’s own powers of British administra- the Patriote cause. What he “comfortable circumstances” political sensibilities and tors. As the masthead to could not have foreseen was above his father's dry goods informed the trajectory of his The Vindicator—the leading his future career in store, a business from which adulthood. Around the age

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of twenty he left Ireland to causes. He also found his attend the Paris School of voice as a writer and political Medicine, which was shut firebrand. In 1828, The Irish down two years later for its Vindicator hired O'Callaghan purported political radicalism. as its Quebec correspondent. After a brief return to Ireland, Established by supporters of he headed to North America, Irish politician Daniel O’Connell where he spent the remainder and his fight for the rights of of his life. Catholics in Great Britain, the In 1823 O’Callaghan newspaper eventually addressed arrived in Lower Canada. broader issues and emerged Named for its position on the as the leading English- St. Lawrence River, Lower language voice of the Patriote Canada was created in 1791 Party. It then became known from a division of the Province as simply The Vindicator. of Quebec into Upper and O’Callaghan quickly estab- Lower Canada. It is unclear lished himself as a strong Irish what led O’Callaghan there, voice in Lower Canada, his NEW YORK STATE LIBRARY but his first decade was largely acerbic pen disdainful of the spent providing medical care colony’s British administrators. for the indigent, mostly Irish He became the paper’s editor immigrant population of in April 1833. “Our rights must Montreal and Quebec City. not be violated with impunity,” O’Callaghan biographer Jack he wrote in 1835. “A howl Verney surmised that a sense of indignation must be raised Agitate!!!” In 1834, as tensions The Irish Vindicator, the leading of Christian obligation drove from one extremity of the between the Patriotes and the English-language voice of the O’Callaghan’s work with the Province to the other, against Tories rose, O’Callaghan was Patriote party, hired O’Callaghan as poor in these early years. the Robbers, and against all elected to Lower Canada’s its Quebec correspondent in 1828. In the late 1820s, however, those who partake of the Legislative Assembly. As a O’Callaghan became a plunder. Henceforth, there well-respected Patriote Party “nascent Jacksonian”; years must be no peace in the member, he subsequently later he would speak of the province, no quarter for the served as the lieutenant for its seventh American president plunderers. Agitate! Agitate!! leader, Louis-Joseph Papineau. in glowing terms, "a man of great mind—of strong will Exile and of the purest honesty, The political situation spiraled loving the Masses and hating out of control in November all Banks and Monopolies." 1837 as calls for constitutional This newfound belief in the reform gave way to demands democratic ideal that govern- for an independent Lower ment should work for all Canada. Amid the disorder in people regardless of class or Montreal, O’Callaghan and station led him toward politi- his compatriots came under cal measures as a means to attack. On November 13, alleviate social ills. O'Callaghan fled Montreal Over the next few years, with Papineau. They eventually O’Callaghan became increas- made their way to Albany, ingly involved in what could MCCORD MUSEUM OF CANADIAN HISTORY New York in December with be called populist political Louis-Joseph Papineau, 1865. rewards for their capture set at

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Louis-Joseph Papineau addresses a crowd of Patriotes in 1837.

£500 and £1,000 respectively In a letter to Albany industrialist were in Dutch, he began to After being disap- by Lower Canada's British Erastus Corning, who had uncover the copious surviving administrators. earlier agreed to supply records from the Dutch colony. pointed by the lack Upon his arrival in Albany, materials for the invasion, “Astonished at the vast O’Callaghan put his mind to he confessed that he “never amount of historical informa- of support from his doing what he could for the expected that [the rebels] tion" that had been withheld fellow Democrats, Patriote cause while looking would have returned to the from readers of English, for gainful employment. He States so very soon as they O'Callaghan began to study O'Callaghan turned considered starting his own have done. The news which Dutch in earnest. newspaper or purchasing an arrived on Sunday night O’Callaghan’s discovery of to an unlikely existing one, but instead went surprized [sic] & disappointed these documents aroused an political partner, to to raise me not a little.” In November intense interest in the early money for a planned Patriote the rebels tried again, only to history of New York and pulled , an invasion of Lower Canada. He be beaten back once more. several of his interests into returned to Albany in January After several years of prac- one pursuit. It spoke to issues Albany Whig and 1838 disappointed; though ticing medicine sporadically of colonization, with which lifelong friend. he had been received with in Albany and New York City, he was intimately familiar, great enthusiasm, donations O’Callaghan returned to and revealed that the State of were sparse. Americans were journalism as a writer for the New York had a past that had apparently indifferent to Albany journal The Northern not been dominated by the Canadian affairs. “In regards Light in 1841. It was this rule of the English, whom to the friends in N. York and position that set him on a he resented deeply. He soon Albany about which you different career path. Likely left his career in medicine inquire,” he wrote to William motivated by his ideological to devote most of his energy Lyon Mackenzie, a confidant sensibilities, he began to look toward scholarly pursuits. and Upper Canada counter- into sources for a proposed At the end of 1845, he part in the 1837 rebellion, “I article on the anti-rent rebel- published the first volume write to say that the proverb lion on nearby Van Rensselaer of his two-volume History of of ‘great cry and little wool’ Manor. The manor extended New Netherland, or, New has been verified in both back to the seventeenth- York Under the Dutch, the these cities.” century Dutch colony of New first full-length scholarly A force of Patriotes Netherland and preserved a history of the Dutch colony. gathered near the Canadian system of land tenure that

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS LIBRARY border and launched an many considered archaic and The Making of an Archivist Thurlow Weed, a lifelong friend of invasion of Lower Canada in feudal. Historian John Gilmary To continue these scholarly O’Callaghan. February 1838; British troops Shea, a frequent correspondent pursuits, O'Callaghan needed easily repulsed the Patriote of O’Callaghan’s, claimed that a position that would give him forces, which were already once O’Callaghan discovered ample time to research and weakened by mass desertions. that the legal documents write. After being disappointed O’Callaghan was despondent. relating to the land in question by the lack of support

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O’Callaghan fled Lower Canada as THE ARCHIVES battles broke out between the British CONNECTION and the Patriotes. but the passions that had endeared him to his Patriote allies were brought to bear anuscripts and Special on his historical work in New York. MCollections at the

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA LIBRARY New York State Library holds many of O'Callaghan's from his fellow Democrats, or descriptive list, of the Dutch documents for some manuscript translations. O'Callaghan turned to an administrative records of New thirty years, is keenly impressed Although many burned in unlikely political partner, Netherland in the state's by O'Callaghan's understand- the Capitol Fire of 1911, Thurlow Weed, an Albany possession. The records were ing of seventeenth-century some survive in a fragile Whig and lifelong friend. originally bound in books and Dutch. As Venema notes, condition. His translation of Weed got O’Callaghan a job arranged alphabetically, but in O'Callaghan's work is all the Volume 1 of the Dutch at the Brooklyn Navy Yard the absence of the standard more impressive when one administrative records in the that gave him plenty of free of keeping documents in considers that nineteenth- New York State Archives, time to pursue his studies. their original order, to which century translators had access later revised by A.J.F. van This allowed him to finish the archivists adhere today, to only a fraction of the refer- Laer, is the only record we second volume of History of O’Callaghan decided to re- ence material available to have of most of those pages, New Netherland, published arrange them by genre and translators today. as the volume was destroyed in 1848. It was also around date. Unfortunately his in the 1911 fire. The Albany this time that the City of New disruption of the original order A Legacy for the State Institute of History & Art York hired him to translate destroyed the context in O’Callaghan spent the last holds O'Callaghan's letter several volumes of the records which the records were created years of his life in New York to Erastus Corning. Other of New Amsterdam, present- and maintained, information City, where he died in 1880 correspondence and personal day New York City. that can be crucial to our from injuries he sustained papers are held by the O’Callaghan’s big break understanding of them. His when he was hit by a streetcar Library of Congress. came in the spring of 1848, arrangement of these records in 1877. He is still remembered Much biographical infor- when the State of New York remains to this day. in Canada for his role in the mation for this article was hired him to edit and trans- After completing the Rebellions of 1837, and in the taken from Jack Verney’s late what would become the calendar, O'Callaghan went for his work as O’Callaghan: The Making widely cited four-volume set, on to translate four manuscript a historian, archivist, translator, and Unmaking of a Rebel Documentary History of the volumes of the administrative and documentary editor. (1994). The only other full- State of New York. These records between 1869 and These seemingly incompatible length work on O’Callaghan volumes comprised a selection 1872. While his translations halves are made whole is Francis Shaw Guy’s of transcriptions from European contain their share of mistakes, through consideration of his dissertation at the Catholic archives that had been the early twentieth-century life’s experiences. The printed University of America, completed by historian John translator of many of the same word—his weapon of choice Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan: Romeyn Brodhead years earlier. documents, A.J.F. van Laer, in the political battles in A Study in American The state subsequently decided concluded that the translations Lower Canada—dominated Historiography (1934). to publish the documents in were “a vast improvement” his American life, from which Many transcriptions and their entirety, again edited and on the work of Francis Adrian the legacy of colonialism was translations of colonial Dutch translated by O'Callaghan, in Vander Kemp, an earlier never far. And the passions documents are available on the ten-volume set Documents translator whose efforts Van that endeared him to his the website of the New Relative to the Colonial History Laer deemed “absolutely Patriote allies were brought to Netherland Institute, www. of the State of New York, which worthless for critical historical bear on his historical work in newnetherlandinstitute.org. is still in use by scholars today. work.” New Netherland New York, where he labored Now comfortably employed Research Center Associate to decipher the documentary by the state, O’Callaghan Director Janny Venema, a evidence of its earliest history began work on a calendar, translator of New York’s early of European colonization. n

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