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Hugh Hazlett

Released
Gender:Male
Race:White
Era:1800s
State:Maryland
Support
Abolitionism Underground Railroad
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Biography

Hugh Hazlett was an Irish immigrant wood sawyer and Underground Railroad conductor in Maryland. On the night of July 24, 1858 he led seven freedom seekers out of the Cambridge area of Dorchester County; betrayed by an informer, the group was ambushed and captured in Caroline County. Hazlett was jailed in Denton, nearly lynched by a mob at Cambridge, tried and convicted, and sentenced to forty-four years in prison. His case drew national attention, reported in the New York Tribune.

Case

Charges: Assisting enslaved people to escape (Dorchester County, July 1858) in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act.
Incarcerated: 1858
Sentence: Forty-four years in prison. Verdict as recorded: Yes — tried and convicted in Dorchester County (1858).
Convicted: Yes