O'Callaghan, E. B. (Edmund Bailey), 1797-1880

Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan was born in 1797 in Mallow, Ireland. He was trained in medicine in Dublin, Paris, and Quebec. O’Callaghan first immigrated to Quebec in 1823 and obtained his license to practice in 1827. During the 1820s, he became involved in radical political circles, befriending Louis-Joseph Papineau and other members of the Patriote party. O’Callaghan married his first wife, Charlotte Augustina Crampe of Sherbrooke, in 1830, and they had a son together who died a few days after birth. In 1833, O’Callaghan moved to Montreal, where he became a newspaper editor for the Vindicator and Canadian Advertiser. O’Callaghan was also elected to public office, and became even more involved in Papineau’s Patriote party. During the Lower Canadia Rebellion of 1837, O’Callaghan and Papineau fled to New York, where O’Callaghan settled permanently in 1939. He practiced medicine in Albany until 1846, and later became a historian and took a position as an archivist for the State of New York. O’Callaghan’s first wife died in 1835 and he remarried in 1941 to Ellen Hawe, who bore him a second son. O’Callaghan died in New York City on 29 May 1880.