"Social reformer" Rowland G. Hazard Signed Check Dated 1843 For Sale

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"Social reformer" Rowland G. Hazard Signed Check Dated 1843:
$299.99

Up for sale "Social reformer" Rowland G. Hazard Hand Signed Check Dated 1843.  

– June 24, 1888) was an American industrialist, politician, and social reformer. 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.[4] 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.

Hazard grew up in Bristol, Pennsylvania, in

the home of his maternal grandfather, merchant Isaac Peace and Elizabeth (née

Gibson) Peace, who were both originally from Barbados, but relocated to Charleston before eventually

settling in Bristol. His mother was almost exclusively in Bristol from 1807 to

1820, helping to care for her grandfather until his death. He was educated in

a Quaker boarding school in Burlington, New Jersey,

where he developed a particular interest in mathematics. In 1819, he returned

to Rhode Island to join

his elder brother Isaac in the management of the Peace Dale Manufacturing

Company. A third brother, Joseph P. Hazard, became a partner in the Peace Dale

operation in 1828, and the business took the name "R.G. Hazard &

Co." One of Rowland Hazard's responsibilities was selling the company's

products to planters in the

southern United States, In 1843, Hazard acquired a textile mill complex at the village now known as Carolina, Rhode Island,

and renamed the mill and its surrounding village in honor of his wife. The

Carolina Mills Company remained in family ownership until 1863 and was operated

by his son Rowland II until at least 1877. After

an 1845 fire destroyed one of the mill buildings, the brothers built new

facilities, including expanded hydropower systems and a fireproof stone factory.  In 1848, the partnership incorporated,

becoming the Peace Dale Manufacturing Company, with Isaac P. Hazard as

president and Rowland Hazard as secretary/treasurer. In 1849 the business

started a transition into making woolen shawls and other high-quality woolens

instead of cheaper fabrics. From about 1833 to 1842, Hazard spent his winters

in New Orleans to sell goods, including cotton bagging cloth,

pre-cut garments, low-priced shoes, and raw "Negro cloth" for use by African-American slaves. According

to his granddaughter, Hazard considered that "the greatest effort of his

life" began when he was in New Orleans on business in the winter of 1841

when he learned that a free African-American man from Newport was being

held in custody in Louisiana as an escaped slave. Hazard's investigations found that many free

African-Americans were being detained under the assumption they were escaped

slaves. He worked with Jacob Barker, then a New

Orleans lawyer, to obtain freedom for nearly 100 people being held as slaves.

The action later led to charges being filed against several public officials

who were responsible for the illegal detentions. His involvement with abolitionist causes and in the Republican Party eventually

caused his company to lose favor with its markets in the southern United

States. This helped to prompt the Peace Dale mills' transition from making

cheap cotton products to selling higher quality woolens. Hazard served three

one-year terms in the Rhode Island

House of Representatives, winning election as a state representative

in 1851, 1854 and 1880. He also was a state senator from

1866 to 1867. In 1856, he was one of Rhode Island's delegates to the founding

convention of the Republican party. Four years later he was a delegate to the 1860

Republican National Convention. In 1851, Hazard

introduced a bill to the Rhode Island Assembly that proposed railroad companies

should be responsible for providing an equal benefit to the public as they had

a "habit of annexing private property." In 1854, while serving in the

state legislature, he made a speech criticizing the Stonington Railroad Company

for charging discriminatory rates for both freight and passengers. Shortly

thereafter, the railroad company retaliated by refusing to let Hazard ride on

one of its trains. Resolutions passed by the South Kingstown Town Council in

reaction to his treatment are said to have formed "the germ of"

the Interstate Commerce Law of

1886 

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