Thomas Hazard

Thomas Hazard (or Hassard) was born in 1610 in England or Wales. He and married first to a woman named Martha. The name was sometimes written Hassard. The first record of him in America was in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1635. In 1638 he was admitted freeman of Boston and two years later he was admitted freeman of Portsmouth, Rhode Island. In April of 1639, he and eight others signed a contract “to propagate a plantation in the midst of the island or elsewhere, and to engage ourselves to bear equal charge, answerable to our strengths and estates, in common, and that our determination shall be by major voice of judge and elders, the judge to have a double voice.” Two months later, he was “one of four proportioners of land in Newport”. In 1639 he was admitted freeman of Newport and on March 12, 1640, he was appointed a member of the General Court of Elections. He was in Newtown, Long Island, for a short time in 1665. His first wife, Martha, died in 1669 and he remarried to a woman, also named Martha, the widow of Thomas Sheriff. His son, Robert, and two daughters opposed the union and were disinherited as a result. He left them each one shilling in his will, dated 1676. When the will was proved in 1680, he names Martha as sole executrix, referring to her as his “beloved yoke-fellow” and giving her “all movable and immovable estate, as housing, goods, cattle, and chattels, etc.” She died in 1691.