Clinton Decatur Hazel
Attended Yale Divinity School 1897-1898
Biography
Clinton Decatur Hazel was born in either 1865 or 1866 in New Bern, North Carolina to William and Margaret Hazel. According to the 1870 census, his father was a house carpenter.1 He attended the public schools in New Bern. According to a biographical sketch from the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, he began pastoring over Clinton Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church in 1886 and was an ordained elder in Saratoga, New York.2 Between 1890 and 1896, he pastored the AME church in Attleboro, Massachusetts and the Second AME Zion Church in Providence, Rhode Island, and the AME church in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During his time in Rhode Island, he briefly enrolled at Brown University between 1893 to 1894.3 He moved to Connecticut where he pastored the AME church in Derby, Connecticut.
In 1897, he enrolled at Yale Divinity School for the 1897-1898 school year as a resident licentiate.4 During his time in Connecticut, he also served as president of the New England African Methodist Episcopal Zion Sunday School Conference.5 In 1898, he was transferred to pastor for AMEZ in Paterson, New Jersey.6 Later in the year, he alongside other colored pastors endorsed the Republican candidate for governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt.7 He received a master of arts degree from Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina and a doctorate of divinity from Barrett’s College in Pee Dee, North Carolina in 1901.8 At some point in his life, he married Carrie V. Herring.
In 1904, he also took a Jewish Chautauqua course under Rabbi Henry Berkowitz.9 He pastored in Atlantic City, New Jersey and eventually became the Presiding Elder of the New Jersey Conference and the dean of the Theological Circle within the AMEZ Church.10 He was reassigned as presiding elder of the Washington district before returning to his hometown, New Bern, and pastoring at St. Peter’s Church.11 In 1923, he began pastoring at Mount Olive AME Zion Church in Waterbury, Connecticut and in 1925, pastored for the AME Zion church in Portland, Maine.12 The following year, he was beset with illness and returned to New Bern where he died June 21st, 1926.13
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"United States, Census, 1870", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MW8X-HJN : Thu Jan 16 15:12:44 UTC 2025), Entry for Margaret Hazel and William Hazel, 1870. ↩
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James Harvey Anderson, Biographical Souvenir Volume of the Twenty-Third Quadrennial Session of the General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, PA: Big Wesley A. M. E. Zion Church, 1908), 72. ↩
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Catalogue of the Officers And Students of Brown University, 1893-1894 (Providence, RI: Press of P. S. Remington & Co., 1894), 212. ↩
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Catalogue of Yale University, CXCVII Year, 1897-1898 (New Haven, CT: The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Press, 1897), 395. ↩
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“Personal,” Boston Evening Transcript, August 30, 1897, 7. ↩
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“City News,” The Waterbury Democrat, May 9, 1898, 1; “A.M.E. Zion Conference,” Matawan Journal, September 22, 1898, 1. ↩
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“15 Colored Clergymen for Roosevelt,” The New York Times, October 20, 1898, 2. ↩
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Anderson, Biographical Souvenir Volume, 72. ↩
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The Menorah: A Monthly Magazine for the Jewish Home 27, 189 (1904). ↩
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“A.M.E. Meeting,” Atlantic City Sunday Press - the Sunday Gazette, April 21, 1912, 2. ↩
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“A.M.E. Zion Conference In Session,” The Afro-American, June 22, 1912, 6; “Fiftieth Anniversary of St. Peter’s Church,” The Daily Journal, January 16, 1914, 7. ↩
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“Waterbury, Conn.” The New York Age, July 11, 1925, 7; “Zion Church To Have New Pastor,” Evening Express, June 18, 1925, 14. ↩
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“Rev. C. D. Hazel Will Take Rest And Recuperate,” Evening Express, January 30, 1926, 16; "North Carolina, Deaths, 1906-1930", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F3H5-3BW : Fri Jun 21 21:15:40 UTC 2024), Entry for Clinton Decatur Heazel and William Heazel, 21 Jun 1926. ↩
Full Name
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Gender
Decade(s) at Yale
Clinton Decatur Hazel -