Hugh Hazlett (b. circa 1831 - d. ?)
MSA SC 5496-3387
Accomplice to slave flight, Dorchester County, Maryland, 1858
Biography:
Born in Ireland around 1831, Dorchester County lawyer Hugh Hazlett was around twenty-seven years old when he was caught in an attempt to assist seven slaves run away. With the help of Hazlett, on Saturday, July 24, 1858 John Green, the slave of Samuel Hooper; Mary Light and Charles Anthony Light, the slaves of Reuben E. Philips; Esther Cornish, Solomon Cornish and Thomas Ridout, the slaves of Ann M. Dixon; and William Henry Cornish, the slave of Jane Caton, attempted to run away from Cambridge, Maryland. The group was apprehended a few days later in Caroline County. Among the people responsible for the capture of the runaways were Messrs. John Walls, Titus West, William Wicks, Tarr, Knotts, Henry Johnson, Edward C. Johnson and others in Caroline county, as well as Mr. William H. Grace and Samuel R. Vinton of Dorchester County. The captors received a reward of one thousand dollars for the slaves alone, and there was believed to be a large reward for the arrest of Hugh Hazlett as well.1
The Easton Gazette reported that when Hazlett and the group of slaves were taken back to Cambridge, "A large crowd was ready to receive them, and had it not been that the citizens of Dorchester have a love for law and order, they might have used the White man with rough hands."2 The guilty verdict was handed down in Dorchester County Circuit Court on November 12, 1858, convicting Hazlett on seven indictments for enticing, persuading, assisting, and harboring slaves in a attempt to have them run away from their masters. He was sentenced on the first indictment to serve a sentence until May 1867, and six years each for each of the other indictments. In total, he was sentenced to the Maryland Penitentiary for forty-four years, six months, and nine days. His servitude began on November 18, 1858. Like Daniel Craner (another man convicted of enticing slaves to run away), Hazlett was "Recommended to the clemency of the Governor by the Director of said Penitentiary for good conduct and the offence of which he was convicted being one which under the present Constitution of the State can no longer be committed...and the punishment he has already endured, being deemed a sufficient expiation." Governor A.W. Bradford directed notice of application for the pardon of (Daniel Craner &) Hugh Hazlett on Nov 21, 1864. He was pardoned on December 19, 1864 by Governor Bradford.
1. Easton Star Collection MSA SC 3596 [OCLC
9637128],
“The capture of the gang of Negroes…”, August 10, 1858, Description:
1858,
Jan. 5 - 1858, Dec. 21, Film No.: M 11317.
2. Easton Gazette Collection, MSA SC 2940, “Negroes
Captured”, August 7, 1858, “Trial of Hugh Hazlitt in Cambridge”,
November
20, 1858, Description: 1854, May 27 - 1861, Dec. 14, Film No.: M 11033.
Return to Hugh Hazlett's Introductory Page
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