Thomas Hazard

Thomas Hazard
Born	by 1610 possibly Dorsetshire, England
Died	after 1677 Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Other names	Thomas Hassard
Education	Signed name with a mark
Occupation	Ship carpenter
Spouse(s)	(1) Martha Potter (2) Martha (_______) Sheriff
Children	Robert, Elizabeth, Hannah, Martha

Thomas Hazard (1610 - after 1677) was one of the nine founding settlers of Newport on Aquidneck Island (Rhode Island) in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He settled in Boston and Portsmouth before settling Newport, but later returned to Portsmouth. His descendants include Commodores Oliver Hazard Perry and Matthew C. Perry and three colonial Rhode Island deputy governors.

Thomas Hazard was a founding settler of Newport, Rhode Island, who, upon arriving from England, first settled in Boston, and then came to Portsmouth before settling in Newport. Moriarity suggested that he had come from Dorsetshire, England, but Anderson concluded there is insufficient evidence for this assertion. He was a ship carpenter, and was in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony as early as 1635, and admitted to the church there on 22 May 1636. He was made a freeman of Boston in 1636, but by 1638 he was admitted as an inhabitant of Portsmouth on Aquidneck Island, where many followers of Anne Hutchinson had settled.

On 28 April 1639, he and eight others signed a compact, and soon established the town of Newport at the southern end of Aquidneck Island. Once there, he was named as one of four assigned to proportion the land, and to collect four pence for each acre laid out. In September he was made a freeman of Newport, and the following March was a member of the general court of elections. On 20 June 1644 he sold to Henry Bull certain parcels of land that had been granted to him by the freemen of Newport.

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