Thomas Hazard
Thomas Hazard, often referred to as "College Tom," was an influential abolitionist born in Narragansett, Rhode Island. He was a descendant of one of Newport's founders and hailed from a family known for its strong sense of individuality and independence. Although he attended Yale College, Hazard ultimately chose not to obtain a degree due to conflicts with his Quaker beliefs. Initially, he utilized slave labor on his farm, but after a pivotal revelation regarding the immorality of slavery, he freed his slaves and began advocating against the institution within the Society of Friends.
Hazard made significant contributions to anti-slavery efforts, including being involved in the passage of a bill to prohibit the importation of slaves into Rhode Island in 1774 and another petition for the abolition of slavery in 1784. He also played a key role in founding the Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade and was one of the incorporators of Rhode Island College, now known as Brown University. His social engagements extended to educational initiatives, exemplified by his involvement in establishing the Friends School in Providence. Thomas Hazard passed away shortly before his seventy-eighth birthday, leaving behind a legacy of moral conviction and social advocacy against slavery.
Subject Terms
Thomas Hazard
- Thomas Hazard
- Born: September 15, 1720
- Died: August 26, 1798
Abolitionist known as “College Tom,” was born in Narragansett, Rhode Island, the son of Robert Hazard and Sarah (Borden) Hazard, and was a descendant of the Thomas Hazard who had been one of the founders of Newport in 1639. For four generations previous, Thomas Hazard’s ancestors had lived in the Narragansett region, and had developed a mythology around their highly individual family characteristics, priding themselves on “a peculiar decision of character, a certain amount of pride, and a pronounced independence, coupled with a slight amount of reserve,” as one of Thomas Hazard’s relatives was to write of the family in 1879.
There were, by family count, thirty-two other Thomas Hazards contemporary with “College Tom” in the 1700s, and he derived his nickname from the fact of his attendance for several terms at Yale College. He decided, however, not to pursue his studies to a degree, since he could find no way of reconciling such a worldly honor with his strong Quaker principles.
In 1742 he was admitted as a freeman of the colony in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, and in that year, at the age of twenty-two, he was married to his third cousin, Elizabeth Robinson, the daughter of Governor William Robinson.
Hazard began to work his farm in the same region as that of his father and many others of his family. In the area in which he had grown up, all of the farmers, the Quakers among them, used slave labor for their workers, and so did Thomas Hazard when he first began to cultivate his land. He had a keen interest, however, in moral and religious questions and was fond of keeping up connections and conversations with churchmen in his own region and wherever he traveled. Just before the death of his father, in 1745, in a conversation with a church deacon in Connecticut, he accepted for the first time the argument that any man who held his fellowman in slavery could not be called Christian.
This came as a sudden and compelling revelation to Hazard, who returned home and, freeing his slaves, began to work his farm with free labor. Hazard’s father threatened to disinherit him, and he had many difficult moments with his neighbors and friends, all of whom owned slaves and several of whom imported them to Rhode Island to be sold.
As well as giving up slave labor on his farm, Hazard began to work actively within the Society of Friends against slavery; he was one of the first in the society to do this. A touching note has come down in the story of his first (and for some time, his only) convert, his close friend Jeremiah Austin, who freed the one slave he possessed, his sole inheritance from his father.
Hazard slowly created an awareness of the issue within the Society of Friends, and in 1774 he was a member of a special committee of the Yearly Meeting which brought a bill before the general assembly to affirm personal freedom as the greatest of the rights involved in the struggle by the new Americans at that time against their own oppressions, and to go on to prohibit the importation of slaves into Rhode Island. This bill was passed by the assembly, and Hazard went on to work more actively against the holding of slaves. In 1783 a committee in which he was again involved in the Yearly Meeting brought a petition for the abolition of slavery to the general assembly; and in February 1784 an act prohibiting slavery was passed.
Following this victory in the Society of Friends, Hazard enlarged his efforts in the colony, becoming one of the founders of the Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade. In 1787 the Rhode Island Assembly passed an act abolishing the slave trade.
Hazard was a gregarious and interested participant in the affairs of his day in the colony, both within the Society of Friends and without. Despite his hesitation to accept a collegiate degree for himself, in 1764 he was one of the incorporators of Rhode Island College, which was later to become Brown University. He was also influential in the establishment of the Friends School in Providence, Rhode Island (later known as the Moses Brown School). In fact his social and public endeavors were so many and he carried them through with such force and enthusiasm, that “.. . in his latter days, to illustrate the deceitfulness of the human heart, he used to say ... he at last discovered that he himself had ‘ruled South Kingstown monthly meeting forty years, in his own will, before he found it out.’ “
“College Tom” Hazard died in Narragansett, Rhode Island, shortly before his seventy-eighth birthday.
Biographical sources include The Dictionary of American Biography (1934); C. Hazard: Thos. Hazard, son of Robt., Call’d College Tom (1893); and T. R. Hazard: Recollection of Olden Times (1879).