Ebenezer Hazard, Former Postmaster General

The third Postmaster General and last appointed by the Continental Congress, Ebenezer Hazard (1744– 1817), served from 1782 to 1789.  Responsible for expanding the reach of the postal service, he created a new east–west route to the frontier town of Pittsburgh, and extended service along the north–south route from Falmouth, Maine, to Savannah, Georgia.  Hazard also reestablished mail service with Europe, which had been discontinued during the Revolutionary War.  Despite these achievements, Hazard earned the ire of President George Washington for discontinuing a practice that permitted newspapers to distribute their publications for free via the mail.  According to Washington “the suppression of intelligence at that critical juncture was a wicked trick of policy contrived by an aristocratic junto.”  In 1789, Congress enacted legislation to place the Postmaster General under direction of the President.  Four days later, Washington appointed Samuel Osgood to the position.

Russian-American sculptor Gleb W. Derujinsky was born to aristocratic parents in Smolensk, Russia, in 1888.  A student of Rodin, Derujinsky studied at the Académie Julian in Paris and the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.  After the Russian Revolution, he departed Crimea as a sailor on a ship bound for America.  Derujinsky arrived in the U.S. in 1919, and soon established himself as a prominent sculptor in New York.  Among his best known works are portrait busts of presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy.