Col. Chillion Washburne Hazzard, p. 161

COL. CHILLION WASHBURNE HAZZARD, editor and proprietor of the Monongahela Republican, was born in Monongahela City, Penn., May 5, 1849, in the same house and in the same room in which his mother was born and married. He is a son of Hon. Thomas R. Hazzard and Harriet M. Hamilton, the former of whom was born in Chemung county, N. Y. The paternal ancestor of Thomas R. Hazzard was from the North of Ireland.

C. W. Hazzard was educated in the common schools of Monongahela City, and afterward attended an academy taught by Henry Lee, at West Newton, Westmoreland Co., Penn. Mr. Lee was formerly a professor in Washington College, and belonged to the celebrated Lee family, prominent in the Revolution, and some of whose descendants were leaders in the Confederate service during the Civil war. After completing his education in West Newton, he entered the Monongahela Republican printing office as an apprentice. His father purchased the newspaper plant, and admitted his son to a joint ownership. This he left, however, to accept a commission in the Twelfth Pennsylvania Reserves. He served through the war, and left the service a brevet major at the close of the campaign. He was in forty-two fights, including Drainesville (December 20, 1861), Mechanicsville, Gaines' Mills, Newmarket Cross Roads, Malvern Hill, Second Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg (where he was wounded), Gettysburg, Bristoe Station, Mine Run, Wilderness (seven days), Spottsylvania (his brevet reading "promoted for gallantry at Spottsylvania"), North Anna and Bethesda Church. He is specially mentioned in general orders for gallantry in action, as appears in the official records of the Rebellion published by Congress. In 1863 Capt. Hazzard was transferred from the line to the staff as Division mustering officer, and served in that capacity with Gens. Sykes, Crawford and McCandless. After the war he returned home and resumed the publication of the Monongahela Republican, of which he then became publisher and editor. On the formation of the National Guard of Pennsylvania after the war, Col. Hazzard was made Assistant Adjutant-general of the Seventeenth Division, on the staff of Maj.-Gen. Thomas F. Gallagher, with the rank of colonel. On the reorganization of the guard, he was appointed on the staff of Gen. James A. Beaver, as a brigade inspector-general, serving as such until his chief was elected Governor of the Commonwealth. Col. Hazzard then relinquished his position in the National Guard. He has served in various military positions of a civil character: as president of the Washington County (Penn.) Veteran Association; as one of the managers of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association; as secretary of the Pennsylvania Reserve Veteran Association; was elected Commander of the Department of Pennsylvania, G. A. R., at Reading, January 30, 1880, and has been several times chairman of the committee on resolutions in the National Encampment, of which body he has attended every encampment since the organization of the G. A. R., except that at San Francisco, Cal. He has been somewhat in demand as a speaker on G. A. R. occasions, and has delivered over two hundred addresses in its interests. As a newspaper man, he has been thirty-nine years a printer, during thirty years of which he has been editor. He has been secretary of the Editorial Association of Western Pennsylvania, Virginia and Eastern Ohio since its organization. He was made postmaster of his native city almost immediately after leaving the service, and resigned on the day when Mr. Cleveland was first inaugurated. He was the first State president of the Patriotic Order of the Junior Sons of America, and for six years published its official organ, a monthly journal called the Junior's Friend. In 1880 he established the daily edition of the Monongahela Republican, now in the twelfth year of its existence. He is a prominent Freemason, and has taken all of the degrees to the thirty-third, Sir Knight twenty-second, and is a member of Syria Temple, Mystic Shrine. He served for four consecutive years as Grand Regent of the Royal Arcanum of the State of Pennsylvania, and is at this writing Supreme Vice Regent of the Order at large.

Col. Hazzard was united in marriage with Miss Mary B. Goff, and they have two children: DeVernon, a student at Washington College, and Harriet H. Col. Hazzard is ably assisted in his editorial office by Miss Jane King, who promises to be one of the brightest newspaper writers in the State. He was secretary of the Monongahela Valley Agricultural Society, and one of the directors in the Monongahela Driving Association. He is a trustee, on behalf of the State, of the California Normal College, and a trustee of the Monongahela Memorial Hospital. Col. Hazzard has two brothers: Joseph De V., an orange grower in Florida, and T. L. Hazzard, M. D., professor of physiology in the Western Pennsylvania Medical College, at Pittsburgh. Mr. and Mrs. Hazzard attend the First Presbyterian Church at Monongahela City.

Text taken from page 161 of:
Beers, J. H. and Co., Commemorative Biographical Record of Washington County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1893).

Transcribed April 1997 by Neil and Marilyn Morton of Oswego, IL as part of the Beers Project.
Published April 1997 on the Washington County, PA USGenWeb pages at http://www.chartiers.com/.

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