Ward Kingsbury Hammond


		b. May 9, 1805 

bp. Fairlee, Vermont 

m. (1) May 31, 1827, Sophronia Hale, Bath, Ohio 

m. (2), Texas 

d. September 30, 1878 

pd. Ft. Worth, Texas

Ward Kingsbury Hammond was born in Fairlee, Vermont, on May 9, 1805. His parents were Calvin Hammond and Roxanna Field, who had moved to Fairlee from Glastonbury, Conn. When Ward was ten years old, his family moved to Summit Co., Ohio, where Calvin's relatives had recently settled.

**Figure 2.3:** Ward Kingsbury Hammond

At the age of twenty-two, he married Sophronia Hale of Bath, daughter of Jonathan Hale and Mercy S. Piper. He and his bride first lived in a small log cabin away from town but soon moved to a house Ward built adjacent to an identical one owned by his brother, Royal, south of Hammond's Corner. There, he and Sophronia had the following children:

Emily Pamelia, d. at age sixteen
Merwin Kingsbury, b. Feb. 24, 1830, see page
Charles E., d. young
Julius A., b. April 25, 1833, see page
Julia Sarah, b. April 25, 1833, see page
Charles Newell, b. June 25, 1835, see page
Mercy Jane, b. April 6, 1837, see page
Edwin O., b. 1838, see page
Royal Cornelius, b. Oct. 19, 1843, see page
Orson Ward, b. June 6, 1846, see page

Ward and his family lived there until about 1841-42, when they moved to Delaware, Ohio, then joined other Hammond families migrating Illinois. In Jo Daviess Co., Ill., the family worked a rented farm while Ward worked for a season (1847) in the ``Pinery'' (North woods) and nearly died of pneumonia there. Sophronia and the older children farmed and later the family secured land of their own in Hanover Township, one and one-half miles west of the town of Hanover, where they lived until the death of Sophronia Hale Hammond in 1873.

Ward moved to Texas to live with Orson Ward (his youngest son) after Sophronia Hale's death. There he married a second time. Orson Ward later seemed to think that he ``married for money'' this second time. Orson Ward didn't think his daddy was an ``honest man''. He evidently spent or wasted the money of the widow he had married^4.3.

Ward K. Hammond died in Texas in September of 1878, and is buried in an unmarked grave there, in Fort Worth. It is thought that he died of a communicable disease. U. A. Watlington thought it may have been yellow fever^4.4.