Hazard, Thomas Robinson (03 January 1797–26 March 1886), manufacturer and reformer, was born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island, the son of Rowland Hazard, a manufacturer and merchant, and Mary Peace. Hazard’s father established the Peace Dale Manufacturing Company, the first water-powered wool-carding and fulling mill in South Kingstown, about 1802, on the site of an eighteenth-century fulling mill. By 1814 the company had expanded to include spinning and perhaps the earliest power loom-weaving in the state. After limited formal education at Westtown in Pennsylvania, and after training in mill management and operations at the growing enterprise, Hazard worked in the family’s woolen business between 1813 and 1842....
