Background
Moses Hazen was born on June 1, 1733, at Haverhill, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Moses and Abigail (White) Hazen, and a descendant of Edward Hazen, who had settled in Rowley in 1649.
Moses Hazen was born on June 1, 1733, at Haverhill, Massachusetts, United States, the son of Moses and Abigail (White) Hazen, and a descendant of Edward Hazen, who had settled in Rowley in 1649.
In 1761 Moses Hazen was commissioned lieutenant in the 44th Regiment. Two years later he retired on half pay and settled at St. John’s, Quebec, where he became a prosperous farmer and maintained sawmills, a forge, and a potash house. He also had a share in the land grants which his brother William, a trader of Newburyport, had acquired in New Brunswick.
When the Revolutionary War began, Hazen fell under suspicion from both sides. In May 1775 he brought to Governor Carleton the news of Arnold’s seizure of St. John’s; his brother took refuge in New Brunswick in June. Both Montgomery’s forces and the Canadian authorities imprisoned him and seized his property, although later Congress indemnified him for his losses. He joined Montgomery and took part in the attack on Quebec and in the siege of Montreal. On the retreat he fell out with Arnold, who found him too independent a subordinate and brought him before a court-martial, but Hazen was honorably acquitted. He spent the winter at Albany, recruiting for the 2nd Canadian Regiment, of which he was made colonel January 22, 1776. The regiment, known as “Congress” or “Hazen’s Own, ” he had raised partly in Canada and among Canadian refugees. It took part in the Staten Island campaign, in the battles of Germantown and Brandywine, and in the siege of Yorktown.
Having urged another Canadian campaign, Hazen in 1778 served with General Gates on a board selected to prepare a plan for a second expedition and also gathered stores for that proposed under Lafayette. Though this project was abandoned, he pressed the Vermonters to support the plan and got himself sent north, in the summer of 1779, to begin the construction of a military road to the Canadian border. Later he was recalled to New Jersey, where in addition to his military duties, he was busy securing an acquittal from another court-martial, this time for an infraction of Steuben’s discipline, and trying to get funds from Congress to pay the expenses of his soldiers. A week after the Board of Treasury reported that it had no funds, Congress made him a brigadier general, June 29, 1781. At the close of the war he resigned and settled in Vermont, where he had bought land during the war. He died in Troy, New York.
In December 1770 Hazen married Charlotte de La Saussaye at Montreal.