Peter Floyd Sorenson

Hazard Powder Peter Floyd Sorenson

Enter a world where honest work makes fatherless families, business agreements become tools of corruption, toxic plagues devastate cities, indigenous policies create profitable opportunities, partnerships devolve into rivalries, racism influences company payrolls, humans become expendable chaff, and haves and have-nots are defined by the type of risks they are willing to take to survive or thrive. Experience life in Savannah, New York City, Brooklyn, Faversham, Peace Dale, Narragansett, Southwick, Enfield, and Hazardville; where gunpowder either makes you a whole man or leaves just enough of you behind to fill a bucket. The story of the rise and fall of the Hazard Powder Company, one of the largest gunpowder manufacturing facilities in the country in the 1800s, is told in detail from its inception to its death in a violent explosion, crisping employees and nearly destroying the nearby town of Hazardville. Meet the Loomis Brothers, Neeland, Parkes, and Allen, tobacconists from Suffield, Connecticut, who, along with Allen Andrews Denslow, a businessman from New Haven, as they purchase nearly 500 acres of woodland bordering the Scantic River and build a small gunpowder mill. Meet Augustus George Hazard, of the Rhode island Haszard's, as he reclaims the glory and social standing his father and grandfather had let slip from their branch of the family by purchasing the mill site and expanding it to rival that of the Duponts of Delaware. Meet Robert Stuart Waddell, star witness for the government and disgruntled employee, as he almost singlehandedly dismantles the Dupont Empire. Meet the Prickett's, émigrés from England, who successfully steer the powdermill through each crisis up until the final concussive explosion. And finally, consider the employees as each meets their maker in explosion after explosion, with most being buried in nearly empty coffins.