Moses Hazen

Moses Hazen (June 1, 1733 – February 5, 1803) 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, (the 2nd Canadian, also known as "Congress' Own") 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.

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".

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 (Saint John, New Brunswick), 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. (Godin escaped into the woods with two of his grandchildren.) 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".

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. (Christie later became one of the largest landowners in Quebec.) 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.