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Submitted: 9/20/12 • Approved: 9/20/12 • Last Updated: 9/25/12 • R758435-G0-S3
William Cogswell Hazen
Farmer Land Owner
January 3, 1806 - April 16, 1872
William Cogswell Hazen is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Des Arc, Prairie County, Arkansas. This cemetery is listed with the Register of Historic Places and dates back to 1851. In addition to the cemetery, also included in the Register of Historic Places are the Frith-Plunkett House, the 1918 Bethel House which was designed by noted architect Charles Thompson, and the 1913 Prairie County Court House.
Hazen Arkansas is located near the center of Prairie County, approximately forty-three miles directly east of Little Rock on Highway 70 and Interstate 40. It is the northern part of the Grand Prairie.
The town is named after Dr. William Cogswell Hazen, who was born in Virginia, and came from Covington, Tennessee to Arkansas with his family and twenty-one slaves in 1854. He settled in a spot 1.3 miles north of present day Highway 70 and one mile west of Highway 63, where the prairie ends. The Hazens built cabins for the family and the slaves, clearing and planting crops. The cotton harvested was sent by boat from DeValls Bluff in Prairie County, and on east to the White River, and on to Memphis, Tennesse where it was sold.
When the Civil War broke out, Hazen's sons joined Arkansas regiments. According to tax records, Hazen's slaves, ages five to sixty, were valued at $14,700. When Union solders captured DeValls Bluff in August 1863, the Hazen family left for Texas. They took very little with them, and burned cotton and many other valuable holdings that could be used by the Union army. In 1864, while living in Texas, Hazen's wife died. His slaves worked in war plants making shoes and clothing for Confederate soldiers.
After the war, Hazen returned to Arkansas alone. His slaves left him in Little Rock. He farmed awhile then moved to Des Arc, Prairie County, where he established a general store. Then, Hazen returned to his farm and remarried. During this time, he built the first three-bedroom house in what now is Hazen Proper, located at the corner of Chester and Madison streets.
He died in 1872, a year after the first cotton gin was brought to Hazen area and eleven months before the first post office bore his name. The town was surveyed in 1873, and Hazen's widow deeded the first tract of land for the city of Hazen, which was incorporated in 1884.
Contributed on 9/20/12
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Record #: 758435