Rowland G. Hazard
American politician (1801-1888)

Rowland Gibson Hazard (October 9, 1801–June 24, 1888) was an American industrialist, politician, textile merchant, and social reformer. He was a descendant of the prominent settler Thomas Hazard, progenitor of the American Hazard Family, who migrated from England during the Great Puritan Migration of 1630 and settled Rhode Island in the 1600s. While he had links to southern slaveholding states, he is noted for his public stand against slavery.
Early life
Hazard was born on October 9, 1801, in South Kingstown in Washington County, Rhode Island. He was one of nine children born to the former Mary Peace (1775–1852) and Rowland Hazard (1764–1836). His mother was raised in Charleston, South Carolina, and spent a year studying in London as a girl. His father founded the Peace Dale Manufacturing Company in Peace Dale, Rhode Island, in 1802. Among his siblings was older brothers Isaac Peace Hazard and Thomas Robinson Hazard.
A descendant of an old New England Quaker family, Hazard was a fifth-great-grandson of Thomas Hazard, one of the nine founding settlers of Newport on Aquidneck Island in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and a member of the longstanding Hazard Family of New England. His paternal grandparents were Thomas Hazard and Elizabeth (née Robinson) Hazard, herself a daughter of William Robinson, the Deputy Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rowland G. Hazard” is american politician (1801-1888). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rowland, Hazard and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7372131. VIAF identifies the subject as 58078930. The Library of Congress control number is n85363498. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1801, 1888, 1630 and 1775.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rowland G. Hazard” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.