Thomas Robinson Hazard

Background

Thomas Hazard was born on January 3, 1797, in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, United States, the second son of Rowland and Mary (Peace) Hazard, the grandson of Thomas Hazard, called “College Tom, ” and the brother of Rowland Gibson Hazard.

Education

For a few years Thomas studied at the institution maintained by the Society of Friends at West town, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Career

Thomas Hazard became interested in sheepraising in Narragansett, whence he came to be called “Shepherd Tom, ” a name which greatly pleased him. In 1821 he began the manufacture of textiles and combined sheep-raising with it. By the time he was forty-three he had put aside a fortune sufficient to permit him to retire from active business. The remainder of his life was spent at “Vaucluse, ” the estate he had purchased on the island of Rhode Island, near Newport.

He opposed capital punishment, and in 1852, a bill originating with him, providing for its abolition and forbidding the pardon of long-term convicts excepting by vote of the General Assembly, was passed. He shared in the establishment of common schools in Rhode Island and was a promoter of relief work in the United States during the Irish famine of 1846-1847.

Hazard wrote in opposition to slavery, to war, and to the exclusion of woman from the suffrage; his writings discuss among other subjects taxation, the law for the collection of debts, and Rhode Island turkeys. His Recollections of Olden Times, written when he was in his eighty-first and eighty-second years, casts a rich after-glow on life in the Narragansett Country and contains genealogies of the Hazard family. In 1882 a collection of discourses called the Jonny-Cake Letters, first printed in the Providence Journal, was published by Sidney S. Rider. In 1915 a new edition in the typography of Merrymount Press was brought out under the title: The Jonny Cake Papers of "Shepherd Tom, ” containing also “Reminiscences of Narragansett Schools of Former Days. ” “The Jonny Cake Papers” cut across the Narragansett Country into regions more delightfully whimsical than soberly geographical.

Achievements

• Thomas Hazard was a well-known social reformer of his time. He was one of the original incorporators of the first Rhode Island Hospital for the Insane, later Butler Hospital. In 1851 Hazard made to the General Assembly of Rhode Island a detailed report on the care of the poor and insane of the state from which important reforms resulted.

Works

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  • Civil and Religious Persecution in the State of New York (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Civil and Religious Persecution in the State...)

  • Recollections of Olden Times: Rowland Robinson of Narangansett and His Unfortunate Daughter; With Genealogies of the Robinson Hazard, and Sweet Families of Rhode Island (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Recollections of Olden Times: Rowland Robins...)

  • A Constitutional Manual for the National American Party: In Which Is Examined the Question of Negro Slavery in Connexion with the Constitution of the United States

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • Sundry Prices Taken from Ye Account Book of Thomas Hazard, son of Robt (Callp College Tom)

    ( About the Book Titles that are fiction anthologies are ...)

  • Mediums And Mediumship And Eleven Days At Moravia (1873)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Membership

Hazard was vice-president of the American Colonization Society.

Connections

Hazard was married to Frances, daughter of Jonas Mintum of New York, October 12, 1838.

Father:

Rowland Hazard

Mother:

Mary (Peace) Hazard

Spouse:

Frances (Mintum) Hazard

Brother:

Rowland Gibson Hazard

Grandfather:

Thomas Hazard

Daughter:

Gertrude Minturn Hazard

Daughter:

Esther Robinson (Hazard) Dunning

Daughter:

Frances Minturn Hazard

Daughter:

Anna Peace Hazard

Daughter:

Mary Robinson Hazard