Brig.-Gen. Hazard Stevens, (USA)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_Stevens

Hazard Stevens (June 9, 1842 – October 11, 1918) was an American military officer, mountaineer, politician and writer. He received the Medal of Honor for his service in the Union army during the American Civil War at the Battle of Fort Huger. Stevens and P. B. Van Trump made the first documented successful climb of Mount Rainier on August 17, 1870.

Early life and the Civil War

Stevens was born in Newport, Rhode Island on June 9, 1842, the son of Isaac I. Stevens and Margaret Hazard Stevens. In 1854, his father became the first governor of the new Washington Territory and the Stevens family moved to Olympia, Washington. Both father and son volunteered in the Union army during the Civil War and served in the 79th Highlanders of the New York Volunteers. Hazard was wounded and his father, by then a general, was killed in the Battle of Chantilly on September 1, 1862. Hazard recovered and became the youngest brigadier general of volunteers in the Union army in the Third Division of the 9th Corps under Getty. For his contribution to the capture of Fort Huger, Virginia, on April 19, 1863, Stevens received the Medal of Honor.

After the war and the ascent of Mount Rainier

After the war, Stevens returned to Washington to care for his widowed mother, working initially for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and then as a federal revenue collector in 1868. He then met P. B. Van Trump, who was working as the private secretary to Marshall F. Moore, the seventh governor of the territory. Both men were interested in climbing Mount Rainier and on August 17, 1870 they completed the first documented ascent of the mountain.

The Stevens Van Trump Historic Monument along the Skyline Trail in Mount Rainier National Park was erected to commemorate the historic first ascent of the mountain. Nearby is the Stevens Canyon and Stevens Ridge, both named after him.

Stevens joined the bar in 1871, representing the Northern Pacific Railroad Company in their prosecution of lumber theft cases. In 1874, Stevens investigated British clams on the San Juan Islands at the request of President Ulysses S. Grant.

Later life

Hazard Stevens during his second ascent of Mount Rainier in 1905.In 1874, Stevens moved to Dorchester, Massachusetts near Boston. He the entered the Massachusetts state legislature as a reformer in 1885. He successfully lobbied for the preservation of Boston's Old State House. He was unsuccessful in a run for the United States Congress.

Stevens climbed Mount Rainier a second time in 1905 on a trip organized by The Mazamas, an Oregon mountaineering club.

Stevens established the Cloverfields Dairy Farm in Olympia, Washington in 1916. Now on the National Historic Register, the former farm is the site of the present Olympia High School.

Later in life, Stevens wrote "The Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens", a noted biography of his father in addition to many papers on the Civil War. He died unmarried in 1918 and is interred at Island Cemetery in Newport, Rhode Island Plot: Lots 650-653.

Medal of Honor citation

Rank and Organization:

Captain and Assistant Adjutant General, U.S. Volunteers. Place and Date: At Fort Huger, Va., April 19, 1863. Entered service at: Olympia, Washington Territory. Born: June 9, 1842, Newport, R.I. Date of issue: June 13, 1894.

Citation: Gallantly led a party that assaulted and captured the fort.