Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Parsons, Hazo (Haza)

Born: 1789-04-23 Massachusetts

Died: 1873-11-30 Bloomington, Illinois

During the War of 1812, Parson served as a sergeant in Captain Zenos Stebbins' company in Lieutenant Colonel William Edward's Regiment of Massachusetts Artillery. After the war, he married Betsey Whitman, a union that produced seven children. In 1841, Parsons and his family moved to McLean County, Illinois, settling in Bloomington. In March 1847, Parsons, a Mason, joined with three other Masons to hold the first organized meeting of Masons in McLean County. This meeting eventually led to the incorporation of Bloomington Lodge No. 43. In 1849, the Taylor administration appointed Parsons postmaster of Bloomington, a post he held until 1853. In 1860, he was living in Bloomington's Ward 3 and owned $2,000 in real estate and had a personal estate of $300.

Gravestone, Evergreen Memorial Cemetery, Bloomington, IL; Transactions of the McLean County Historical Society Bloomington, ILL.: Volume I. War Record of McLean County with Other Papers (Bloomington: McLean County Historical Society, 1899), 413, 414; Milo Custer, Soldiers of the Revolution and the War of 1812 Buried in McLean County, Illinois (Bloomington: n. p., 1912), 38; Gardner W. Pearson, Records of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia Called Out by the Governor of Massachusetts to Suppress a Threatened Invasion During the War of 1812-14 (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1913), 4; Register of all Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1849 (Washington, DC: Gideon, 1849), 468; Edward Tremayne, Tremayne’s Table of Post Offices in the United States (New York: W. F. Burgess, 1850), 38; Table of Post Offices in the United States on the First Day of January, 1851 (Washington, DC: W. & J. C. Greer, 1851), 24; Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1853 (Washington, DC: Robert Armstrong, 1853), 497; Town and City Clerks of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Vital and Town Records (Provo, UT: Holbrook Research Institute), Belchertown, 30; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 3, Bloomington, McLean County, IL, 234.