Albert Hazlett (Villard, 1901)
Scholarship
Albert Hazlett was born in Pennsylvania, September 21, 1837, and was executed March 16, 1860. George B. Gill says: "I was acquainted with Hazlett well enough in Kansas, yet after all knew but little of him. He was with Montgomery considerably, and was with Stevens on the raid in which Cruise was killed. He was a good- sized, fine-looking fellow, overflowing with good nature and social feelings... Brown got acquainted with him just before leaving Kansas." Before the raid he worked on his brother's farm in western Pennsylvania, joining the others at Kennedy Farm in the early part of September, 1859. To Mrs. Rebecca Spring he wrote on March 15, 1860, the eve of his execution, "Your letter gave me great comfort to know that my body would be taken from this land of chains... I am willing to die in the cause of liberty, if I had ten thousand lives I would willingly lay them all down for the same cause." He was arrested in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, under the name of William Harrison, on October 22, extradited to Virginia, tried and sentenced at the spring term of the Court, and hanged on March 16, 1860.
Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown, 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years After (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1910), 682.
