Moses Hazen
Moses Hazen was a brigadier general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Born in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, he saw action in the French and Indian War with Rogers' Rangers. His service included particularly brutal raids, during the Expulsion of the Acadians and the 1759 Battle of Quebec. He was formally commissioned into the British Army, shortly before the war ended, and retired on half-pay outside Montreal, Province of Quebec, where he and Gabriel Christie, another British officer, made extensive land purchases in partnership. During his lifetime he acquired land in Quebec, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, but lost most of his Quebec land due to litigation with Christie and the negative effects of the Revolution.
In 1775 he became involved in the American invasion of Quebec early in the American Revolutionary War, and served with the Continental Army, in the 1775 Battle of Quebec. He went on to lead his own regiment, throughout the war, seeing action in the 1777 Philadelphia campaign and at Yorktown in 1781. He was frequently involved in litigation, both military and civil, and constantly petitioned Congress for compensation of losses and expenses incurred due to the war. He supported similar efforts by men from his regiment who were unable to return to Quebec because of their support for the American war effort.
Early life
Moses Hazen was born in Haverhill, a frontier town in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, to an old New England Puritan family. Histories that mention Hazen sometimes indicate that he was Jewish, however a genealogist documents Hazen's lineage to England, where the family name was Hassen. Some contemporaries of Hazen seem to have thought he was Jewish; for example, Sergeant James Thompson, in his diary The Fraser’s Highlanders, describes meeting him during the retreat from the Battle of Sainte-Foy: "On the way, I fell in with a Captain Moses Hazen, a jew".French and Indian War
Hazen was apprenticed to a tanner when the French and Indian War broke out. In 1756, he enlisted with the local militia, which included a number of family members. He first served at Fort William Henry near Lake George, where he probably first met, and may have served under, Robert Rogers of Rogers' Rangers. Rogers eventually recommended him for an officer's commission in a new company of the Rangers; in 1758, after having worked for his brother providing supplies for the British Siege of Louisbourg, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in John McCurdy's company of the Rangers at Fort Edward. In McCurdy's company, he saw action at Louisbourg, including the initial landings, when the action was quite fierce.After Louisbourg, the company was stationed first at Fort Frederick, and then at Fort St. Anne, where the company was part of a campaign against Indians and Acadians that had taken refuge there from the ongoing expulsion of the Acadians. These raids were sometimes quite brutal; the company was known to scalp Acadian settlers. In one particularly brutal incident, Hazen was responsible for the scalping of six men, and the burning of four others, along with two women and three children, in a house he set on fire. Joseph Godin dit Bellefontaine, a leader of the local militia and the father of one of the women, claimed that he was forced to witness this event in an attempt to coerce his cooperation with the rangers. General Jeffery Amherst, who did not hear of the incident until after he had promoted Hazen to captain, noted, "I am sorry that to say what I have since heard of that affair has sullied his merit with me as I shall always disapprove of killing women and helpless children."
In January 1759, Captain McCurdy was killed when a tree felled by one of his men fell on him; Hazen was given command of the company. Later in 1759, his company was at the siege of Quebec, where the company was primarily engaged in scouting and raiding in the countryside; he was away on one of those raids during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. In another notable atrocity that may have involved Hazen's company, a priest and thirty parishioners in a parish near Quebec were killed and scalped.
Hazen also fought at the 1760 Battle of Sainte-Foy, where he was severely wounded in the thigh. He thus missed the final British campaign which saw the capture of Montreal later that year, although his Rangers did take part. In February 1761, he purchased a commission as a first lieutenant in the 44th Regiment of Foot in the British Army. He spent the remainder of the war on garrison duty at Montreal, retiring on half-pay in 1763. General James Murray wrote approvingly of Hazen in 1761, "He discovered so much still bravery and good conduct as would justly entitle him to every military reward he could ask or demand".
Land development
During the siege of Quebec, Hazen had met Gabriel Christie, then a deputy quartermaster. Christie owned some land in the Richelieu River valley south of Montreal, and wanted to expand his holdings. After the war, Christie and Hazen jointly purchased the seigneuries of Sabrevois and Bleury, located on the east bank of the Richelieu near Fort Saint-Jean. They also leased land on the west side of river from the Baron of Longueuil. These holdings gave them almost exclusive control over the land holdings around Saint-Jean, which is the northernmost navigable point reachable from Lake Champlain.Christie, who was still in military service, was frequently away from the land, so Hazen developed the land while Christie provided the funding. Hazen constructed a manor house at Iberville, and two mills, and set about selling timber and other business endeavours. In 1765, Hazen was also appointed a deputy land surveyor, and a justice of the peace. As part of his business dealings, he offered General Thomas Gage, then in command of British forces in New York City, facilities and lumber for military use. Gage was uninterested at the time, letting Hazen know that he would keep the offer in mind, if the need for military movements became necessary in the area.
Hazen expanded the business of the seigneuries, but his aggressive development also incurred debts, which caused friction with Christie. In 1770, Christie, unhappy with the debts, eventually demanded an accounting. This ultimately led to a division of the holdings, with Hazen receiving the southern portion of the Bleury seigneurage, styled Bleury-Sud. Hazen and Christie were in and out of court for years afterward over control of these lands; Christie eventually won complete control over those lands after the American Revolution.
In 1762 Hazen's brother John settled Haverhill, New Hampshire, in the far north of that province on the east side of the Connecticut River, and in 1764 Jacob Bayley settled Newbury, in what is now Vermont, across the river from Haverhill. Hazen had shares in both of these settlements; he also acquired land west of the Connecticut River in what is now Bradford, Vermont. It was at this time that the idea of constructing a road from there to Saint-Jean was first raised; this idea surfaced again during the American Revolutionary War, when George Washington authorized construction of what became known as the Bayley Hazen Military Road.
His land developments continued to grow in 1764 when he joined the Saint John River Society, and organization created by a group of military officers for the purpose of developing land along the Saint John River, then in Nova Scotia. His coinvestors included Thomas Gage, Frederick Haldimand, William Johnson, and Thomas Hutchinson.
In the fall of 1770 Hazen married Charlotte de la Saussaye, a woman from a good family in Montreal. They settled down near Saint-Jean, where they built a house and began farming.
American Revolutionary War
Continental Army service
At the start of the Revolutionary War, in 1775, Hazen was living on British half-pay in Saint-Jean. When Benedict Arnold raided Fort Saint-Jean on May 18, Hazen reported the news of that raid first to the military authorities in Montreal, and then to Governor Guy Carleton in Quebec, before returning home to consider the consequences the conflict might have on him and his lands.The American invasion of Quebec arrived near his home at Saint-Jean on September 6. On that day, Hazen met with General Philip Schuyler, gave him information that Fort Saint-Jean was well-defended and unlikely to be taken by siege, and that the local habitants were unlikely to assist the American effort. This gloomy portrait led Schuyler to consider retreating; but the arrival of additional American troops, and a more optimistic assessment from James Livingston, a grain merchant living near Chambly, encouraged the Americans to renew the attack. Livingston went on to form the 1st Canadian Regiment in November 1775.
Imprisonment and release
On September 17, Brigadier General Richard Montgomery, now commanding the American forces, began to besiege Fort St. Jean. The next day, a detachment of American forces under the command of John Brown arrested Hazen north of the fort. However, a British sortie from the fort forced Brown's men to retreat; Hazen ended up in British hands. Major Charles Preston, the British commander, was mistrustful of Hazen, and sent him to Montreal under the guard of Claude de Lorimier. Brigadier General Richard Prescott, unhappy with Hazen's explanations of his movements, imprisoned him.File:The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec December 31 1775.jpeg|thumb|left|upright=1.2|The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775
John Trumbull, 1786
He was held in poor conditions for 54 days. Following the fall of Fort St. Jean, the British withdrew from Montreal, transporting prisoners on one of the ships used in the evacuation. Most of this British fleet was captured by the Americans, who released Hazen and other prisoners who had supported them. Unhappy with his treatment by the British, Hazen now joined the American forces, on their way to Quebec City. He joined the invaders even though Americans had done significant damage to his estate during the siege, plundering it for supplies, and using his house as a barracks.