ABSTRACT

William Hazel was born on September 12, 1854, in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was the eldest child of Benjamin Gillette Hazel and Margaret Ann Kellogg Hazel, both of whom were free persons of color. As a youth, Benjamin Hazel was apprenticed to a free Black, William Kellogg, to learn the trade of carpentry and they developed a close working relationship. Benjamin subsequently married one of Kellogg’s daughters. Benjamin and Margaret Hazel moved to Ohio shortly before the Civil War, and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, after the Civil War ended. Benjamin Hazel was a carpenter and wheelwright for over twenty years at the Boston Woven Hose Company; his wife, Margaret Ann, took care of the Cambridge home. Eventually William had two brothers and two sisters; one brother died as an infant.