Thomas Chandler Haliburton

{{Infobox officeholder

| honorific-prefix =

| name = Thomas Chandler Haliburton

| caption = Haliburton, c. 1836

| image = ThomasChandlerHaliburtonCanada40.jpg

| order1 = Member of Parliament for Launceston

| term_start1 = 1859

| term_end1 = 1865

| predecessor1 = Josceline Percy

| successor1 = Alexander Henry Campbell

| birth_date = {{birth date text|17 December 1796}}

| birth_place = Windsor, Nova Scotia

| death_date = {{death-date and age|27 August 1865|17 December 1796}}

| death_place = Isleworth, England

| party = Conservative Party (UK)

| spouse = {{plainlist|

{{marriage|Louisa Neville|1816|1840|end=d.}}
{{marriage|Sarah Harriet Owen Williams|1856}}

}}

| father = William Hersey Otis Haliburton

| relatives =

James Burton (property developer) (cousin)
James Burton (Egyptologist) (cousin)
Henry Burton (physician) (cousin)
Decimus Burton (cousin)

| children =

| signature = Signature of Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865).png

}}

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (17 December 1796 – 27 August 1865) was a Nova Scotian politician, judge, and author who was the first international best-selling fiction author from what is now Canada, and who served as a Conservative Member of Parliament in England. He was the father of the British civil servant Lord Haliburton and of the anthropologist Robert Grant Haliburton.

Life

Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born on 17 December 1796, in Windsor, Nova Scotia, to William Hersey Otis Haliburton, a judge and politician, and Lucy Chandler Grant.{{Cite web |date=2013-01-17 |title=Thomas Chandler Haliburton and his Family |url=https://haliburtonhouse.novascotia.ca/about-haliburton-house/thomas-chandler-haliburton-and-his-family |access-date=2020-02-25 |website=Haliburton House}} His mother died when he was a small child. When Thomas was seven, his father married Susanna Davis, the daughter of Michael Francklin, who had been Nova Scotia's Lieutenant Governor.{{cite DCB |title=Haliburton, Thomas Chandler |first=Fred |last=Cogswell |volume=9 |url=http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/haliburton_thomas_chandler_9E.html}} He attended University of King's College in Windsor, from which he graduated in 1815 to become a lawyer who practiced at Annapolis Royal. Between 1826 and 1829, Haliburton represented Annapolis County in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.

Haliburton's fame came from his writings on history, politics, farm improvement, and from his The Clockmaker serial, which first appeared in the Novascotian and was published throughout the British Empire, that described the humorous adventures of Sam Slick.

=Relations with English Burton family=

Thomas Chandler Haliburton resided in England from 1837,Davies, p. 71 where he was hosted and entertained in London by his cousins Decimus Burton, Jane Burton, James Burton, the Egyptologist, Septimus Burton, the solicitor, Octavia Burton, and Jessy Burton.Davies, p. 72 Thomas asked James Burton, the Egyptologist, to check the proofs of his work Letter Bag of the Great Western, with which Burton was unimpressed, in 1839, and those of the third series of The Clockmaker in 1840.Davies, p. 73 The pair travelled together to Scotland to investigate their common ancestry, and intended to tour Canada and the United States of America together. Thomas Chandler Haliburton's daughter, Susannah, was impressed by James Burton, the Egyptologist: she wrote, in 1839, "Mr James I admire very much. He is one of the most well-bred persons I saw &... decidedly the flower of the flock".

=Retirement and subsequent life=

File:Isleworth, All Saints churchyard, Thomas Chandler Haliburton tomb.jpg

In 1856, Thomas Chandler Haliburton retired from law and moved to England. In the same year, he married Sarah Harriet Owen Williams. In 1859, Haliburton was elected the Member of Parliament for Launceston, Cornwall as a member of the Conservative minority. He did not stand for re-election in 1865.

Haliburton received an honorary degree from Oxford for his services to literature. He continued writing until his death on August 27, 1865 at his home in Isleworth,Davies, p. 89 where he is buried in its All Saints' Churchyard.

Family

File:Mrs Louisa Haliburton wife of Thomas Chandler Haliburton.jpg

File:Amelia Gilpin by William Notman.jpg]]

Thomas Chandler Haliburton married Louisa Neville, who was the daughter of Captain Laurence Neville of the Eighth Light Dragoons, and returned to Nova Scotia with her. Louisa's story before marriage is related in the "Haliburton Chaplet," which was edited by their son, Robert Grant Haliburton (Toronto: 1899). The couple had three sons and five daughters:

Susannah Lucy Anne (later Weldon) (1817 –1899) who was a well known ceramic collector
Thomas Jr. was an accomplished musician who became ill with an “original defect of mind” and died in an asylum in Massachusetts at the age of 26.{{Cite web |date=2013-01-17 |title=Thomas Chandler Haliburton and his Family |url=https://haliburtonhouse.novascotia.ca/about-haliburton-house/thomas-chandler-haliburton-and-his-family |access-date=2023-10-16 |website=Haliburton House}}
Augusta - Mrs. A. F. Haliburton who married an ironmonger
Emma - Mrs. Bainbridge Smith who married an Anglican Clergymen
Amelia (25 Jul 1829 – 14 Jan 1902), a landscape artist, married the Rev. Edwin Gilpin, Dean of Nova Scotia, in 1849; by whom she had four sons and one daughter,Morgan, p. 128 including Edwin Gilpin (1850–1907), an author
Robert Grant Haliburton, Q.C. D.C.L. (1831 – 1901), a lawyer and anthropologist
Laura Charlotte, artist, who married William Cunard, the son of the shipping magnate Sir Samuel Cunard at Windsor, Nova Scotia, 30 December 1851, by whom she had three sons and one daughter. She exhibited her pictures at the Royal Academy and at the Gallery of British Artists.Morgan, p. 67
Arthur (1832–1907), later 1st Baron Haliburton G.C.B., who was a British civil servant and the first native Canadian to be raised to the Peerage of the United Kingdom.

Legacy

Haliburton promoted immigration to the colonies of British North America, and one of his first written works was an emigrant's guide to Nova Scotia that was published in 1823, A General Description of Nova Scotia; Illustrated by a New and Correct Map{{Cite book |url=https://archive.org/stream/cihm_35672#page/n9/mode/2up |title=A General Description of Nova Scotia; Illustrated by a New and Correct Map |location=Halifax |publisher=Royal Acadian School |date=1823|isbn=9780665356728 }} The community of Haliburton, Nova Scotia was named after him.{{Cite book |title=Place-Names of Nova Scotia |first=Thomas J. |last=Brown |date=1922 |url=https://archive.org/details/placenamesofprov00browuoft |page=[https://archive.org/details/placenamesofprov00browuoft/page/62 62]|publisher=Halifax, N.S. Royal Print. & Litho. }} In Ontario, Haliburton County is named after Haliburton in recognition of his work as the first chair of the Canadian Land and Emigration Company.{{citation needed|date=August 2020}}

In 1884, faculty and students at his alma mater founded a literary society in honour of the College's most celebrated man of letters. The Haliburton Society, still active at the University of King's College, Halifax, is the longest-standing collegial literary society throughout the Commonwealth of Nations and North America.{{citation needed|date=August 2020}}

The mention "hurly on the long pond on the ice", which appears in the second volume of The Attaché, or Sam Slick in England, a work of fiction published in 1844, has been interpreted by some as a reference to an ice-hockey-like game he may have played during his years at King's College. It is the basis of Windsor's disputed claim to being the town that fathered hockey.{{Cite web |title=Home |url=https://birthplaceofhockey.com/ |access-date=2023-10-16 |website=The Birthplace of Hockey |language=en-CA}}

In 1902, a memorial to Haliburton and his first wife was erected in Christ Church, Windsor, Nova Scotia, by four of their children: Laura Cunard, Lord Haliburton, and two surviving sisters.{{citation needed|date=August 2020}}

Nova Scotian artist William Valentine painted Haliburton's portrait. His former home in Windsor is preserved as a museum.{{Cite web |title=Haliburton House |url=https://haliburtonhouse.novascotia.ca/ |access-date=2023-10-16 |website=Haliburton House}}

Works

A General Description of Nova Scotia - 1823
[https://archive.org/details/anhistoricaland01haligoog An Historical and Statistical Account of Nova Scotia - 1829]
The Clockmaker - 1836
The Clockmaker, 2nd Series - 1838
The Bubbles of Canada - 1839
[https://archive.org/details/cihm_36503 A Reply to the Report of the Earl of Durham] - 1839
The Letter-Bag of the Great Western - 1840
The Clockmaker, 3rd Series - 1840
The Attaché; or Sam Slick in England - 1843
The Attaché; or Sam Slick in England, 2nd Series - 1844
The Old Judge, Or Life in a Colony - 1849
The English in America - 1851
Rule and Misrule in English America - 1851 [https://archive.org/details/ruleandmisrulee01haligoog vol 1] [https://archive.org/details/cihm_35988 vol 2]
Sam Slick's Wise Saws and Modern Instances - 1853
The Americans at Home; or, Byways, Backwoods, and Prairies - 1855
[http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011609653 Nature and Human Nature] - 1855
The Season-Ticket* - 1860
Maxims of an Old Stager Not by Haliburton, but pseudonym may be "Sam Slick"

References

External links

{{Hansard-contribs |mr-thomas-haliburton |Thomas Chandler Haliburton }}
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070929015722/http://www.haliburtonclub.ca/ The Haliburton Club] (archived 27 September 2007)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110424000107/http://ns1763.ca/hantsco/halibrtn.html Photos of 1937 plaque by Historic Sites and Monuments Board] (archived 24 April 2011)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20051119083558/http://haliburton.museum.gov.ns.ca/ Haliburton House Museum] (archived 19 November 2011)

=Electronic editions=

{{Gutenberg author |id=1880}}
{{FadedPage|id=Haliburton, Thomas Chandler|name=Thomas Chandler Haliburton|author=yes}}
{{Internet Archive author |sname=Thomas Chandler Haliburton}}
{{Librivox author |id=8972}}

{{succession box

| title = Member of Parliament for Launceston

| years = 1859–1865

| before = Lord Josceline Percy

| after = Alexander Henry Campbell

}}

Category:1796 births

Category:1865 deaths

Category:19th-century Canadian novelists

Category:19th-century Canadian historians

Category:Canadian humorists

Category:Canadian male novelists