David Hazzard - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

Hazzard died at Milton, and is buried there in the Methodist Episcopal Cemetery. In Milton there is a marker erected in his memory on Governor's Walk along the Broadkill River. Hazzard's son, John Alexander Hazzard served in the Delaware Senate from 1855 through 1858, and another son, David, was a veteran of the Civil War.

Hazzard was an active member of the Methodist Church and as such was a lifelong advocate for social reforms such as the elimination of Delaware's antiquated system of imprisonment for debt. While not a slave holder himself, he concurred with his Sussex County neighbors in defending the property rights of slaveholders and, most importantly, in the rights of individual states to decide for themselves upon questions of the future of slavery. Recognizing the future risk to the union in the resolution of this question, he like most people in Delaware dismissed the possibility of leaving it, saying: "As the people of this state were the first to adopt the present government, they will be the last to abandon it."