Thomas Robinson Hazard, also known as Shepherd Tom, was a nineteenth-century manufacturer, American author, egalitarian, social reformer, abolitionist, and spiritualist. In his activities and writings Hazard promoted women’s rights, the improvement of public schools and medical institutions, care of the poor and infirm. He argued against the death penalty, and sought the relocation of former slaves to Africa. Throughout his life, he frequently sought to give voice to the downtrodden and underprivileged. Following the death of his two daughters and his wife, Hazard began investigating spiritualism and spiritual communication, a topic on which he later published. In addition, Hazard also produced texts on local history, Rhode Island folklore, and agriculture. Given the scope of his activities and writings, Hazard left behind a large corpus of work that reflects the ideas, industriousness, and political perspectives of the period in America, and which ultimately contributed to the preservation of folklore traditions in the United States.
Thomas Robinson Hazard was born January 3, 1797, in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, the second oldest son of Mary Peace and Rowland Hazard (1763–1835), a textile producer and merchant. Thomas Hazard was also the oldest brother of Rowland Gibson Hazard (1801–1888) a successful railroad promoter, wool manufacturer, philosophical author, and distant relation to Thomas Hazard (1610–1677), a founder of the colony of Rhode Island. Raised in the Quaker faith, Thomas Hazard received a limited education at the Friends’ School in Westtown, Pennsylvania, between 1808 and 1811. Following his schooling, Hazard returned to take up his father’s trade and was employed in the family textile mill, and by 1821 became an independent wool carder. Later Hazard also became a farmer after acquiring a large acreage for pasture and receiving a gift of two ewes. This in turn led him to develop an interest in agriculture, and earned him the nickname “Shepherd Tom.”
In 1838, now financially established and successful, Hazard wed Frances Minturn (1812–1854), a marriage that later produced six children. Given his wealth and affluence from prosperous textile and farming businesses, Hazard purchased an estate in Middletown, Rhode Island, known as Vaucluse, and retired. During this period, Hazard increasingly began advocating for moral, spiritual, educational, social, and political reforms in Rhode Island. He soon began writing articles entitled “Facts for the Laboring Man,” which explored the economic issues facing the common worker and the nation during the economic recession of the period. Hazard’s ideas garnered strong support and were later published as a collection entitled Facts for the Laboring Man by a Laboring Man (1840).
He also subsequently pushed for a study of Rhode Island’s educational institutions and helped form the Rhode Island Institute for Instruction. In 1844, Hazard, along with his colleagues, aided in establishing the Rhode Island Hospital for the Insane, a groundbreaking facility at the time, which sought to care for the mentally disabled and impoverished. He was also later appointed to undertake a survey of the state of Rhode Island’s asylums and poorhouses, the product of which was The Report on the Poor and Insane in Rhode Island: Made to the General Assembly at its January Session (1851). This review detailed the plight of the underprivileged and disabled throughout the state, highlighting policies that led to the adverse treatment of these individuals such as those classifying the mentally ill and handicapped as criminals.
Following his report, Hazard sought to implement institutional reform throughout Rhode Island, petitioning the state legislature for increased funding and improved care for those poor who were also disabled or insane. Hazard offered recommendations and subsequently sought a range of reforms to ensure the development of better asylums and hospitals throughout the state.
In addition to his work on behalf of the sick and indigent, Hazard also published articles arguing for the elimination of the death sentence in the Rhode Island criminal justice system, promoting the need for public education, and petitioning for support to aid the victims of the Irish famine (1845–1852). As a result, by 1852, his writings and arguments led to the abolition of capital punishment in the state of Rhode Island. Furthermore, Hazard, a member of the American Colonization Society, was also a fierce advocate of the antislavery movement, for which he also wrote a number of articles eventually collected and published as A Constitutional Manual: Negro Slavery and the Constitution (1856). In these writings he argued for the protection of the federal Union while recognizing the evils of slavery. The solution Hazard advanced was the African Colonization Movement, which sought to resettle former slaves in Africa.
In 1854, after the death of his wife Frances Minturn and eventually the passing of his two daughters, Hazard became focused on and interested in the notion of communication with spirits in the afterlife. As a result, he visited and engaged those claiming to be spiritual mediums in towns such as Providence, Rhode Island and Boston, Massachusetts. Hazard was also known for having séances at his home, Vaucluse, in an attempt to communicate with his deceased wife. Given these interests, throughout this period Hazard wrote a number of texts on the subjects of spiritualism and spiritual communication including Ordeal of Life (1870), Eleven Days at Moravia (1873), and Modern Spiritualism Scientifically Explained (1875).
In 1858 Hazard became involved in the legal defense of his distant relative, Charles T. Hazard, who was caught in the midst of a land dispute. In support, Shepherd Tom wrote and published Extraordinary Legislative and Judicial, Official, and Professional Proceedings in Rhode Island in the Nineteenth Century, Fished from Dark Waters (1865). In later years Hazard would also author texts on Rhode Island history, legends, and folklore included in his publications Recollections of Olden Times (1879) and The Jonny-cake Papers of “Shepherd Tom” (1880). These publications helped to give traction to the movement to record and preserve the folklore of different regions and locales in the United States. Subsequent students of American culture and folk traditions owe a debt of gratitude to Hazard and other amateur collectors of the nineteenth century for compiling the known stories, legends, and myths of a rapidly vanishing world under the pressures of modernization. Thomas Robinson Hazard died in 1886 in New York City and was later laid to rest on his estate of Vaucluse in Rhode Island.
Sean Morton
See also Bettelheim, Bruno; Campbell, Joseph; Herskovits, Melville Jean; Hughes, Langston; Hurston, Zora Neale; Lomax, Alan; Yarns, Yarn-spinning
Further Reading
Botkin, B. A., ed. 1947. A Treasury of New England Folklore: Stories, Ballads and Traditions of Yankee Folk. New York: Crown.
Drake, Samuel Adams. 1993. New England’s Legends & Folklore. Edison, NJ: Castle Books.
Hazard, Thomas R. 1883. Miscellaneous Essays and Letters. Philadelphia: Collins.
Hazard, Thomas R., and Willis P. Hazard. 1879. Recollections of Olden Times. Washington, DC: Office of the Librarian of Congress.
Robinson, Caroline. 1896. The Hazard Family of Rhode Island 1635–1894. Boston: Merrymount Press.