Ebenezer Hazard

Ebenezer Hazard
Name	Ebenezer Hazard
Birth date	1744
Birth place	Oxford, Massachusetts
Death date	1817
Death place	New York City
Occupation	Printer, publisher, civil servant
Office	United States Postmaster General
Term start	1782
Term end	1789
Predecessor	John Avery
Successor	Samuel Osgood

Ebenezer Hazard was an American printer, publisher, and civil servant who served as United States Postmaster General under the Articles of Confederation and in the early years of the United States. He compiled and printed important collections of colonial records and served in the Continental Congress during the Revolutionary era. His work in documentary preservation, postal administration, and publishing influenced archival practice in the early United States and the transmission of information among the thirteen original states.

Early life and education

Hazard was born in Oxford, Massachusetts and apprenticed in the printing trade in Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked within the milieu of printers connected to the Boston Gazette, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and other Patriot networks. He relocated to New York City and later to New Brunswick, New Jersey, engaging with printers and booksellers linked to Isaiah Thomas, David Hall, Benjamin Franklin, and the colonial print culture centered on newspapers like the New-York Gazette. His formative experience intersected with the print communities associated with Harvard College alumni, colonial legislatures, and the institutions that shaped public debate during the Stamp Act Crisis, the Townshend Acts, and the run-up to the American Revolution.

Career in printing and publishing

Hazard established a printing and stationery business that connected him with prominent figures such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and printers in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Boston. He published newspapers, broadsides, and compilations of official documents that related to the proceedings of colonial assemblies, the Continental Congress, and state legislatures. Hazard produced printed works that drew on archival materials found in repositories like the New York Public Library antecedents, municipal record offices in Newark, New Jersey and Albany, New York, and private collections similar to those of George Washington and Charles Willson Peale. His publications participated in the transatlantic exchange with printers and booksellers in London, Edinburgh, and Amsterdam, and his business intersected with merchants linked to the Triangle Trade and shipping networks from Newport, Rhode Island and Baltimore, Maryland.

Continental Congress and public service

Hazard served as a delegate to the Continental Congress for New Jersey during a period that overlapped with deliberations on Articles of Confederation ratification, wartime logistics, and diplomatic correspondence with representatives to the Treaty of Paris. In Congress he worked alongside delegates such as John Dickinson, Robert Morris, Richard Henry Lee, John Rutledge, and Roger Sherman, and coordinated printing and distribution of congressional resolutions to state governments including Massachusetts Bay Colony successors and Pennsylvania delegates. His public service connected to committees overseeing postal routes, military supply communications with generals like George Washington and Nathanael Greene, and information flows involving ministers such as John Jay and commissioners negotiating with Benjamin Franklin in Paris.

Tenure as United States Postmaster General

Appointed Postmaster General under the Articles of Confederation, Hazard managed an interstate postal system that linked the original thirteen states, coordinating post roads that ran through hubs such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City, Boston, Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia. He succeeded John Avery and served until the early federal administration when officials including Samuel Osgood and later Benjamin Franklin Bache and Gideon Granger restructured postal policy. Hazard grappled with logistical challenges posed by Shays' Rebellion, wartime disruptions, and peacetime expansion, interacting with state legislatures in New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island to maintain service. His administration addressed route establishment, rate schedules, and the coordination of stagecoach companies, river packet lines, and coastal packet services that linked ports such as Providence, Rhode Island, Wilmington, Delaware, and Charleston, South Carolina.

Personal life and family

Hazard married and raised a family in the mid-Atlantic region, forming connections with merchant families of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. His kinship networks linked him to civic leaders, clergy of the Congregational Church and Presbyterian Church, and business partners involved with book trade firms like F. and R. Bailey and T. and J. Swords. Personal correspondence placed him in epistolary exchange with figures such as Andrew Burnaby contemporaries, municipal officials in Albany, and librarians associated with early American scholarly collections at institutions like Yale University and Princeton University.

Legacy and historical significance

Hazard is remembered for his compilations of early colonial and state records that informed subsequent historians, archivists, and editors working on documentary editions related to colonial governance, the American Revolution, and the early United States. His work influenced later documentary projects undertaken by editors connected to the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the New Jersey Historical Society, and federal archival initiatives at the National Archives and Records Administration antecedents. Scholars and librarians citing Hazard include editors in the tradition of John Carter Brown, Jared Sparks, Henry Cabot Lodge, and later archivists such as Philip Merrill and William G. McLoughlin-era historians. His administrative record in the postal service provided precedents for federal postal reform debated by figures like John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton in the early constitutional period. Hazard's printed compilations remain a source for research into colonial legislature acts, municipal records, and Revolutionary correspondence preserved in repositories from Colonial Williamsburg to the Library of Congress.

Category:1744 births Category:1817 deaths Category:United States Postmasters General