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Elizabeth Breese Hazard

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Elizabeth Breese HazardAmerican, 1786 - 1861

Elizabeth Breese Hazard was born 26 May 1786 in New York City, the daughter of Ebenezer and Abigail Arthur Hazard of Philadelphia. Elizabeth married twice. On 9 September 1807, she married Ebenezer Rockwood, Esq., of Boston, the son of Ebenezer and Mary Emerson Rockwood, born 2 June 1781 at Wilton, New Hampshire. He graduated Harvard 1802 and became a lawyer in Boston, in partnership with the Honorable Samuel Hoar. He died 8 May 1815 at Boston, age 34.

In 1821 or 1822, Elizabeth married Reverend Thomas Edward Vermilye (1803-1893) of New York City. He was a student at Yale (Class of 1822), but his diploma was withheld because he "committed matrimony" during his senior year; he later received an honorary degree. He studied at Princeton Theological Seminary and served in various clerical posts, including Pastor of the Church of St. Nicholas/Collegiate Reformed Church of New York City from 1839-1898. Elizabeth Breese Hazard Vermilye had four children by her first marriage, born 1808-1814 in Boston, and another five by her second marriage, all born in New York City. She died 12 January 1861 in New York City.

Elizabeth Breese Hazard and her mother Abigail Arthur were closely connected to the family of artist Samuel Finley Breese Morse (b. 1791), who painted a portrait of Ebenezer Hazard. Abigail Arthur's half-sister Elizabeth Anderson (1743-1832) married the artist's grandfather; Elizabeth Breese Hazard was thus a first cousin by marriage to the artist's mother, Elizabeth Ann Breese (1766-1828). The latter's husband, Reverend Jedediah Morse (1761-1826), served as pastor of the First Church of Charlestown, Massachusetts, from 1789-1820; the couple then retired to New Haven. According to Breese family history, Elizabeth and Ebenezer Rockwood were part of a social circle that included the Morses (see Edward Elbridge Salisbury, Family Memorials . . . on the families of . . . Breese . . ., 1885).

CHS museum records state that "They [the Vermilyes] lived in New Haven, where she ran some kind of a boarding house after her first husband [Rockwood] died [1814]." It seems likely that Elizabeth Breese Hazard Rockwood's removal to New Haven may be explained by the Morse family's residence there; it also seems likely that Abigail Arthur Hazard spent her last years with her daughter in New Haven, where she died in 1820.

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Elizabeth Breese Hazard
about 1800-1810