Rowland Hazard III
Encyclopedia
For other persons named Rowland Hazard, see Rowland Hazard (disambiguation)
Rowland Hazard III (October 29, 1881, Peace Dale, Rhode Island
, US
– December 20, 1945, Waterbury, Connecticut
, US
) was an American businessman and member of a prominent Rhode Island
family
involved in the foundation and executive leadership of a number of well-known companies. He is also known as the "Rowland H." who figured in the events leading to the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous
.
, the Rowland Hazard born in 1881 adopted the name suffix
"III" to distinguish himself from his well-known forebears. According to biographers, Rowland III was known as "Roy" to the Hazard family. He was a graduate of the Taft School and received his Bachelor of Arts
degree from Yale University
in 1903, where he was a member of the Elihu
Club at the time it became a secret Senior Society. Among his Yale classmates, he was known as "Ike" or "Rowley."
Hazard married Helen Hamilton Campbell (1889–1946), a Briar Cliff Manor graduate and daughter of a Chicago
banker, in October 1910. The couple divorced in 1929, but remarried in 1931. They had one daughter, Caroline Campbell Hazard (1911–1953), and three sons, Capt. Rowland Gibson Hazard (1917–1941), Peter Hamilton Hazard (1918–1944), and Charles Ware Blake Hazard (1920–1995). Two of their sons, Capt. Rowland G. and Peter Hamilton Hazard, were killed in the service of the US armed forces in World War II
.
Some of Rowland Hazard III's family and friends from his early years may have been influential in his famous encounter with the pioneering psychiatrist Carl Jung
. Leonard Bacon
, winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize
for poetry, was Hazard's first cousin. Bacon was analyzed by Jung in 1925, an experience which inspired a short book of poetry, Animula Vagula. Hazard's Yale classmate and friend, psychologist Charles Robert Aldrich, was a colleague of Jung and included Hazard among those he thanked in the preface of his book, The Primitive Mind and Modern Civilization.
(1914–1916), Rowland Hazard III was primarily a businessman throughout his career. He was active in the Hazard family's primary enterprise, the Peace Dale Manufacturing Company, until its sale to M.T. Stevens and Sons in 1918. He was also involved in the Solvay Process Company
and the Semet-Solvay Company
. (For further information on the Hazard family's involvement with the Solvay companies, see article on Solvay, New York
.) Rowland III was instrumental in completing his father's ambition to play a leading role in the formation of the Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation (later AlliedSignal
, then Honeywell
following a 1999 merger
with that company). From 1921 until 1927 he was affiliated with Lee, Higginson and Company, a New York banking firm. He organized La Luz Clay Products Company near his ranch in La Luz, New Mexico
. Later in his career, he became an executive vice president of the Bristol Manufacturing Company, a maker of precision instruments based in Waterbury, Connecticut
. He was a director with several companies in addition to Allied Chemical and Dye, including the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Company, the Interlake Iron Company, and Merchant's Bank of Providence, Rhode Island
.
(AA), where he is remembered as "Rowland H.," though Rowland himself never actually joined AA. His own efforts at recovery were markedly influenced by his consultation with pioneering psychologist Carl Jung, and his subsequent involvement with the Oxford Group
, one of the most highly visible Christian
Evangelical
movements of the 1920s and '30s. Recent research further suggests that he may have also been treated by Courtenay Baylor, a lay therapist of the psycho-spiritual therapeutic effort known as the Emmanuel Movement
.
Though Rowland is not named, his experience with Jung is described in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. According to this account, Jung pronounced Rowland a chronic alcoholic and therefore hopeless and beyond the reach of medicine as it was at the time (a credible opinion, considering Jung's unique role in the development of psychoanalysis). The only hope Jung could offer was for a life-changing "vital spiritual experience" -- an experience which Jung regarded as a phenomenon. Jung further advised that Rowland's affiliation with a church did not spell the necessary "vital" experience.
This prognosis so shook Rowland that he sought out the Oxford Group, an evangelical Christian movement prominent in the first half of the twentieth century. The Oxford Group was dedicated to what its members termed "the Four Absolutes" as the summary of the Sermon on the Mount
: absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. The Group was also dedicated to the vigorous pursuit of personal change, and to extending the message of hope through change by means of "personal" evangelism: one changed person sharing his experience with another (see Oxford Group
).
Rowland was aware of the Oxford Group emphasis on personal evangelism through the example of personal change when he came in contact with an alcoholic named Ebby Thacher
while Rowland and two other Oxford Group members who knew Thacher were summering in Glastenbury, Vermont
in 1934. Thacher was the son of a prominent New York
family who, like many well-to-do Eastern US families of the period, summered in New England
, forming life-long associations and friendships with other "summer people" as well as with permanent residents of the area. Upon learning that Ebby was on the verge of commitment to the Brattleboro
Retreat (he former Vermont Asylum for the Insane) on account of his drinking, Rowland and fellow Oxford Group members Shep (F. Shepard) Cornell and Cebra Graves sought out Ebby and shared with him their Oxford Group recovery experiences. Graves was the son of the family court magistrate in Ebby's case, Collins Graves, and the Oxford Groupers were able to arrange for Ebby's release into their care. This led to Ebby's acceptance of the principles of the Oxford Group and his own sobriety. Encouraged in the example of personal evangelism, Ebby later sought out an acquaintance of his own.
Bill (William G.) Wilson
was raised in Vermont
near the summer homes of Rowland Hazard, Ebby Thacher and others who had found release from their alcoholism in the Oxford Group. Ebby had been a "drinking buddy" of Wilson's over many years. By late 1934, Wilson was on the verge of total alcoholic collapse, living off his wife's income in the couple's Brooklyn
, New York
home, when Ebby paid him a visit. Ebby shared with Bill the message of recovery through the application of spiritual principles, famously encouraging Bill to choose his own conception of God. This visit with Ebby set in motion a series of circumstances that led to Bill's own recovery from alcoholism in late 1934. Bill Wilson went on, with Dr. Robert H. ("Dr. Bob") Smith
of Akron, Ohio
, to carry the Oxford Group message of spiritual recovery to other alcoholics. The group of recovering alcoholics founded by Wilson and Smith would later break away from the Oxford Group to become Alcoholics Anonymous by 1939. The Oxford Group renamed itself Moral Re-Armament
in 1938, and largely faded from the prominence it had enjoyed in the 1930s. Moral Re-Armament would eventually become a non-religious humanitarian organization, changing its name to Initiatives of Change
in 2001.
This version of Rowland's story is commonly accepted within AA, substantially confirmed in substance if not in detailed fact by evidence such as an exchange of letters between Bill Wilson and Carl Jung in 1961, in which Jung acknowledged his acquaintance with "Rowland H." Jung also made reference to his treatment of an unnamed alcoholic member of the Oxford Group in a 1954 talk, transcribed and recorded in Volume 18 of his Collected Works, The Symbolic Life.
These recollections of Bill W. have become the basis of assumption for dating Rowland's initial consultation with Jung in the approximate period of 1930-31. More recent investigation into the historical record does not support this timing. Based on research of Hazard family records of the Rhode Island Historical Society
, author Richard M. Dubiel suggested in a 2004 work that the period during which Rowland could have consulted with Jung in this time frame may have been limited to some time between June and September 1931, and perhaps only a few weeks within that span.
This confusion of the historical record appears to have been subsequently resolved by researchers Amy Colwell Bluhm and Cora Finch who, though working independently, were both aided substantially by Hazard family letters and papers in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
at Yale University
. According to both Bluhm and Finch, these Hazard family documents clearly place Rowland in Jung's care for some months beginning in 1926 rather than 1930 or 1931. It appears likely that Wilson was simply repeating Cebra G.'s (inaccurate) recollection of the dates of Rowland's initial treatment by Jung.
These more recent investigations also shed additional light on Rowland's treatment beyond his consultation with Jung. In his 2004 work, Dubiel also discovered evidence that Rowland was likely treated in the early 1930s by Courtenay Baylor, himself a recovering alcoholic and proponent of the so-called Emmanuel Movement
. Inspired by Episcopal clergyman Dr. Elwood Worcester of Boston's Emmanuel Episcopal Church
, the Emmanuel Movement began in 1906 as an effort to treat what would today be regarded as psychological afflictions and disorders such as alcoholism through the application of spiritual principles. The work of the Emmanuel Movement was largely carried on by Baylor after Worcester's death.
Rowland's sobriety does not appear to have been continuous, at least in early years. Bluhm and Finch find suggestions in Hazard family letters of Rowland's possible alcoholic relapse during a trip to Africa in 1927-28. Dubiel also documents a 1936 binge, but it is unclear if Rowland drank intermittently thereafter, if at all, for the remainder of his life. Dubiel notes that Rowland's later years "appear to have been prosperous enough," and included his joining the Episcopal Church in 1936, in which he remained active for the rest of his life. As noted earlier, Rowland never joined AA himself.
Rowland Hazard
Rowland Hazard may refer to:* Rowland Hazard , Rhode Island industrialist, established a woollen mill in Peace Dale, Rhode Island c.1804* Rowland G...
Rowland Hazard III (October 29, 1881, Peace Dale, Rhode Island
Wakefield-Peacedale, Rhode Island
Wakefield-Peacedale is a census-designated place in the town of South Kingstown in Washington County, Rhode Island, United States that includes the villages of Peace Dale and Wakefield...
, US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
– December 20, 1945, Waterbury, Connecticut
Waterbury, Connecticut
Waterbury is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, on the Naugatuck River, 33 miles southwest of Hartford and 77 miles northeast of New York City...
, US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
) was an American businessman and member of a prominent Rhode Island
Rhode Island
The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, more commonly referred to as Rhode Island , is a state in the New England region of the United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area...
family
Rowland Hazard
Rowland Hazard may refer to:* Rowland Hazard , Rhode Island industrialist, established a woollen mill in Peace Dale, Rhode Island c.1804* Rowland G...
involved in the foundation and executive leadership of a number of well-known companies. He is also known as the "Rowland H." who figured in the events leading to the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement which says its "primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety." Now claiming more than 2 million members, AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio...
.
Family and early life
Rowland Hazard III was born into one of the most prominent families in the Rhode Island textile industry. He was the eldest of five children of Rowland Gibson Hazard II (1855–1918) and Mary Pierrepont Bushnell (1859–1936). Although several generations of Hazard men bore the name RowlandRowland Hazard
Rowland Hazard may refer to:* Rowland Hazard , Rhode Island industrialist, established a woollen mill in Peace Dale, Rhode Island c.1804* Rowland G...
, the Rowland Hazard born in 1881 adopted the name suffix
Suffix (name)
A name suffix, in the Western English-language naming tradition, follows a person's full name and provides additional information about the person. Post-nominal letters indicate that the individual holds a position, educational degree, accreditation, office, or honor.- Academic :Academic suffixes...
"III" to distinguish himself from his well-known forebears. According to biographers, Rowland III was known as "Roy" to the Hazard family. He was a graduate of the Taft School and received his Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
degree from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
in 1903, where he was a member of the Elihu
Elihu (secret society)
Elihu, founded in 1903, is the sixth oldest secret society at Yale University, New Haven, CT. While similar to Skull and Bones, Scroll and Key and Wolf's Head societies in charter and function, Elihu favors privacy over overt secrecy...
Club at the time it became a secret Senior Society. Among his Yale classmates, he was known as "Ike" or "Rowley."
Hazard married Helen Hamilton Campbell (1889–1946), a Briar Cliff Manor graduate and daughter of a Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
banker, in October 1910. The couple divorced in 1929, but remarried in 1931. They had one daughter, Caroline Campbell Hazard (1911–1953), and three sons, Capt. Rowland Gibson Hazard (1917–1941), Peter Hamilton Hazard (1918–1944), and Charles Ware Blake Hazard (1920–1995). Two of their sons, Capt. Rowland G. and Peter Hamilton Hazard, were killed in the service of the US armed forces in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Some of Rowland Hazard III's family and friends from his early years may have been influential in his famous encounter with the pioneering psychiatrist Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
. Leonard Bacon
Leonard Bacon (poet)
Leonard Bacon was a American poet, translator, and literary critic. He graduated from Yale University in 1909, and subsequently taught at University of California, Berkeley until his retirement in 1923. In 1923, he started publishing poetry in the Saturday Review of Literature under the pseudonym...
, winner of the 1940 Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for poetry, was Hazard's first cousin. Bacon was analyzed by Jung in 1925, an experience which inspired a short book of poetry, Animula Vagula. Hazard's Yale classmate and friend, psychologist Charles Robert Aldrich, was a colleague of Jung and included Hazard among those he thanked in the preface of his book, The Primitive Mind and Modern Civilization.
Business interests
Although he briefly served in the Rhode Island state senateRhode Island Senate
The Rhode Island Senate is the upper house of the Rhode Island General Assembly, the state legislature of the U.S. State of Rhode Island. It is composed of 38 Senators, each of whom is elected to a two-year term. Rhode Island is one of the 14 states where its upper house serves at a two-year...
(1914–1916), Rowland Hazard III was primarily a businessman throughout his career. He was active in the Hazard family's primary enterprise, the Peace Dale Manufacturing Company, until its sale to M.T. Stevens and Sons in 1918. He was also involved in the Solvay Process Company
Solvay Process Company
The Solvay Process Company was a pioneer chemical industry of the United States in the manufacture of soda ash and a major employer in Central New York...
and the Semet-Solvay Company
Solvay Process Company
The Solvay Process Company was a pioneer chemical industry of the United States in the manufacture of soda ash and a major employer in Central New York...
. (For further information on the Hazard family's involvement with the Solvay companies, see article on Solvay, New York
Solvay, New York
Solvay is a village located in Onondaga County, New York, and a suburb of the city of Syracuse. According to the 2000 census, the village had a total population of 6,845...
.) Rowland III was instrumental in completing his father's ambition to play a leading role in the formation of the Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation (later AlliedSignal
AlliedSignal
AlliedSignal was an aerospace, automotive and engineering company that acquired and merged with Honeywell for $15 billion in 1999, after which the new group adopted the Honeywell name.AlliedSignal was created through a 1985 merger of Allied Corp...
, then Honeywell
Honeywell
Honeywell International, Inc. is a major conglomerate company that produces a variety of consumer products, engineering services, and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments....
following a 1999 merger
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
with that company). From 1921 until 1927 he was affiliated with Lee, Higginson and Company, a New York banking firm. He organized La Luz Clay Products Company near his ranch in La Luz, New Mexico
La Luz, New Mexico
La Luz is a census-designated place in Otero County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 1,615 at the 2000 census. It is located immediately north of Alamogordo and lies in the eastern edge of the Tularosa Basin and on the western flank of the Sacramento Mountains. Until 1848, La Luz...
. Later in his career, he became an executive vice president of the Bristol Manufacturing Company, a maker of precision instruments based in Waterbury, Connecticut
Waterbury, Connecticut
Waterbury is a city in New Haven County, Connecticut, on the Naugatuck River, 33 miles southwest of Hartford and 77 miles northeast of New York City...
. He was a director with several companies in addition to Allied Chemical and Dye, including the Rhode Island Hospital Trust Company, the Interlake Iron Company, and Merchant's Bank of Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
.
Relationship to the Oxford Group and the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous
Rowland Hazard III's struggles with alcoholism led to his direct involvement in the chain of events that gave rise to what is today Alcoholics AnonymousAlcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous is an international mutual aid movement which says its "primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics achieve sobriety." Now claiming more than 2 million members, AA was founded in 1935 by Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith in Akron, Ohio...
(AA), where he is remembered as "Rowland H.," though Rowland himself never actually joined AA. His own efforts at recovery were markedly influenced by his consultation with pioneering psychologist Carl Jung, and his subsequent involvement with the Oxford Group
Oxford Group
The Oxford Group was a Christian movement that had a following in Europe, China, Africa, Australia, Scandinavia and America in the 1920s and 30s. It was initiated by an American Lutheran pastor, Frank Buchman, who was of Swiss descent...
, one of the most highly visible Christian
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
Evangelical
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
movements of the 1920s and '30s. Recent research further suggests that he may have also been treated by Courtenay Baylor, a lay therapist of the psycho-spiritual therapeutic effort known as the Emmanuel Movement
Emmanuel Movement
The Emmanuel Movement was a psychologically-based approach to religious healing introduced in 1906 as an outreach of the Emmanuel Church in Boston, Massachusetts. In practice, the religious element was de-emphasized and the primary modalities were individual and group therapy...
.
Though Rowland is not named, his experience with Jung is described in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. According to this account, Jung pronounced Rowland a chronic alcoholic and therefore hopeless and beyond the reach of medicine as it was at the time (a credible opinion, considering Jung's unique role in the development of psychoanalysis). The only hope Jung could offer was for a life-changing "vital spiritual experience" -- an experience which Jung regarded as a phenomenon. Jung further advised that Rowland's affiliation with a church did not spell the necessary "vital" experience.
This prognosis so shook Rowland that he sought out the Oxford Group, an evangelical Christian movement prominent in the first half of the twentieth century. The Oxford Group was dedicated to what its members termed "the Four Absolutes" as the summary of the Sermon on the Mount
Sermon on the Mount
The Sermon on the Mount is a collection of sayings and teachings of Jesus, which emphasizes his moral teaching found in the Gospel of Matthew...
: absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love. The Group was also dedicated to the vigorous pursuit of personal change, and to extending the message of hope through change by means of "personal" evangelism: one changed person sharing his experience with another (see Oxford Group
Oxford Group
The Oxford Group was a Christian movement that had a following in Europe, China, Africa, Australia, Scandinavia and America in the 1920s and 30s. It was initiated by an American Lutheran pastor, Frank Buchman, who was of Swiss descent...
).
Rowland was aware of the Oxford Group emphasis on personal evangelism through the example of personal change when he came in contact with an alcoholic named Ebby Thacher
Ebby Thacher
Edwin Throckmorton Thacher , was an old drinking friend and later the sponsor of Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson...
while Rowland and two other Oxford Group members who knew Thacher were summering in Glastenbury, Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
in 1934. Thacher was the son of a prominent New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
family who, like many well-to-do Eastern US families of the period, summered in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
, forming life-long associations and friendships with other "summer people" as well as with permanent residents of the area. Upon learning that Ebby was on the verge of commitment to the Brattleboro
Brattleboro, Vermont
Brattleboro, originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States, located in the southeast corner of the state, along the state line with New Hampshire. The population was 12,046 at the 2010 census...
Retreat (he former Vermont Asylum for the Insane) on account of his drinking, Rowland and fellow Oxford Group members Shep (F. Shepard) Cornell and Cebra Graves sought out Ebby and shared with him their Oxford Group recovery experiences. Graves was the son of the family court magistrate in Ebby's case, Collins Graves, and the Oxford Groupers were able to arrange for Ebby's release into their care. This led to Ebby's acceptance of the principles of the Oxford Group and his own sobriety. Encouraged in the example of personal evangelism, Ebby later sought out an acquaintance of his own.
Bill (William G.) Wilson
Bill W.
William Griffith Wilson , also known as Bill Wilson or Bill W., was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous , an international mutual aid fellowship with over two million members belonging to 100,800 groups of alcoholics helping other alcoholics achieve and maintain sobriety...
was raised in Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
near the summer homes of Rowland Hazard, Ebby Thacher and others who had found release from their alcoholism in the Oxford Group. Ebby had been a "drinking buddy" of Wilson's over many years. By late 1934, Wilson was on the verge of total alcoholic collapse, living off his wife's income in the couple's Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
home, when Ebby paid him a visit. Ebby shared with Bill the message of recovery through the application of spiritual principles, famously encouraging Bill to choose his own conception of God. This visit with Ebby set in motion a series of circumstances that led to Bill's own recovery from alcoholism in late 1934. Bill Wilson went on, with Dr. Robert H. ("Dr. Bob") Smith
Bob Smith (doctor)
Robert Holbrook Smith was an American physician and surgeon who co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous with Bill Wilson, more commonly known as Bill W. He was also known as Dr. Bob. He was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, where he was raised, to Susan A. Holbrook and Walter Perrin Smith...
of Akron, Ohio
Akron, Ohio
Akron , is the fifth largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Summit County. It is located in the Great Lakes region approximately south of Lake Erie along the Little Cuyahoga River. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 199,110. The Akron Metropolitan...
, to carry the Oxford Group message of spiritual recovery to other alcoholics. The group of recovering alcoholics founded by Wilson and Smith would later break away from the Oxford Group to become Alcoholics Anonymous by 1939. The Oxford Group renamed itself Moral Re-Armament
Moral Re-Armament
Moral Re-Armament was an international Christian moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from the American minister Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. Buchman, a Lutheran, headed MRA for 23 years, from 1938 until his death in 1961...
in 1938, and largely faded from the prominence it had enjoyed in the 1930s. Moral Re-Armament would eventually become a non-religious humanitarian organization, changing its name to Initiatives of Change
Initiatives of Change
Initiatives of Change is a global organization dedicated to "building trust across the world's divides" of culture, nationality, belief, and background...
in 2001.
This version of Rowland's story is commonly accepted within AA, substantially confirmed in substance if not in detailed fact by evidence such as an exchange of letters between Bill Wilson and Carl Jung in 1961, in which Jung acknowledged his acquaintance with "Rowland H." Jung also made reference to his treatment of an unnamed alcoholic member of the Oxford Group in a 1954 talk, transcribed and recorded in Volume 18 of his Collected Works, The Symbolic Life.
Dispute and confirmation of the historical account
More recently, scholars have questioned this traditional account. In a 1954 recollection of his early life and the beginnings of AA, Bill Wilson stated that "A well-known American businessman named Rowland Hazard had gone to Zurich, Switzerland, probably in the year 1930 [...] as the court of last resort [...]. Hazard remained with Jung a whole year; desperately wanting to resolve his problem..." Wilson reiterates this approximate timing in his 1961 letter to Jung: "Having exhausted other means of recovery from his alcoholism, it was about 1931 that [Hazard] became your patient. I believe he remained under your care for perhaps a year."These recollections of Bill W. have become the basis of assumption for dating Rowland's initial consultation with Jung in the approximate period of 1930-31. More recent investigation into the historical record does not support this timing. Based on research of Hazard family records of the Rhode Island Historical Society
Rhode Island Historical Society
The Rhode Island Historical Society is a privately endowed membership organization, founded in 1822, dedicated to collecting, preserving, and sharing the history of Rhode Island...
, author Richard M. Dubiel suggested in a 2004 work that the period during which Rowland could have consulted with Jung in this time frame may have been limited to some time between June and September 1931, and perhaps only a few weeks within that span.
This confusion of the historical record appears to have been subsequently resolved by researchers Amy Colwell Bluhm and Cora Finch who, though working independently, were both aided substantially by Hazard family letters and papers in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was a 1963 gift of the Beinecke family. The building was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books...
at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. According to both Bluhm and Finch, these Hazard family documents clearly place Rowland in Jung's care for some months beginning in 1926 rather than 1930 or 1931. It appears likely that Wilson was simply repeating Cebra G.'s (inaccurate) recollection of the dates of Rowland's initial treatment by Jung.
These more recent investigations also shed additional light on Rowland's treatment beyond his consultation with Jung. In his 2004 work, Dubiel also discovered evidence that Rowland was likely treated in the early 1930s by Courtenay Baylor, himself a recovering alcoholic and proponent of the so-called Emmanuel Movement
Emmanuel Movement
The Emmanuel Movement was a psychologically-based approach to religious healing introduced in 1906 as an outreach of the Emmanuel Church in Boston, Massachusetts. In practice, the religious element was de-emphasized and the primary modalities were individual and group therapy...
. Inspired by Episcopal clergyman Dr. Elwood Worcester of Boston's Emmanuel Episcopal Church
Emmanuel Church
Emmanuel Episcopal Church is a historic church at 15 Newbury Street in Boston, MassachusettsThe church was founded in 1860 as part of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. Designed by architect Alexander Rice Esty and constructed in 1861, it was the first building completed on Newbury Street in...
, the Emmanuel Movement began in 1906 as an effort to treat what would today be regarded as psychological afflictions and disorders such as alcoholism through the application of spiritual principles. The work of the Emmanuel Movement was largely carried on by Baylor after Worcester's death.
Rowland's sobriety does not appear to have been continuous, at least in early years. Bluhm and Finch find suggestions in Hazard family letters of Rowland's possible alcoholic relapse during a trip to Africa in 1927-28. Dubiel also documents a 1936 binge, but it is unclear if Rowland drank intermittently thereafter, if at all, for the remainder of his life. Dubiel notes that Rowland's later years "appear to have been prosperous enough," and included his joining the Episcopal Church in 1936, in which he remained active for the rest of his life. As noted earlier, Rowland never joined AA himself.