Rowland Gibson Hazard

Born in 1855, Rowland Gibson Hazard Jr. was part of the prominent Hazard family of Peace Dale, Rhode Island. Reliable historical summaries describe him as a business leader who headed major manufacturing companies, while also pursuing wide-ranging personal interests outside industry.

He became known for collecting bird eggs and artifacts from what sources of the time called primitive cultures, and he founded the Museum of Art and Primitive Culture in Peace Dale. Accounts from Santa Barbara also note his role on the board of the Museum of Comparative Oology and say that, after his death in 1918, his widow Mary and his sister Caroline helped create what became the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History in his honor.

As an author, he is associated with a number of published works listed in library records, showing interests that extended beyond business into literature and thought. That mix of executive life, collecting, and writing gives his story an unusual shape: practical, curious, and deeply engaged with the intellectual hobbies of his era.