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b. April 25, 1833
bp. Hammond's Corner, Summit Co., Ohio
m. March 29, 1859, Lydia Carrie Witt
d. 1902
pd. Minneapolis, Minnesota
Julius A. (twin to Julia Sarah Hammond) was one of the older sons of Ward K. and Sophronia Hale Hammond. By the time the family settled in Jo Daviess Co., Ill., in 1846, he was a mainstay of this farming family. His father, Ward K., tried lead mining and later lumbering near Minneapolis while the rest of the family tended the farm. Provided with a better than average education attending Knox College at Galesburg where his Uncle Royal Hammond lived, Julius A. studied in both the classical and scientific departments. Then he studied toward the ministry at Rock River Seminary of the Methodist Church at Mount Morris, Ill., and one year at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., in the theological department.
In 1861, Julius was received on trial in the Rock River Conference and was stationed at Hanover, Ill. After nine months preaching his health failed and he was obliged to resume farming at which he and his family had done well. In 1864 he purchased 120 acres for his own farm and added to it until he had 280 acres.
Julius A. married Lydia Carrie Witt on March 29, 1859. She was the daughter of Catherine Cook and Samuel Witt, natives of Somerset County, Penn. Rev. Samuel Witt was a minister in the Evangelical Association in Pennsylvania. After his death she moved with her mother to Circleville, Ohio, where she grew to womanhood and was educated. Before her marriage to Julius she taught school in Mount Carroll, Peoria, and Freeport, Illinois. After moving to Hanover, she taught in the upper department of the public school.
To this couple were born eight children, six of whom grew to maturity in the comfortable home which they provided. The first born girl, Carrie, died young and Joseph A., a promising young man of nineteen years, died in 1889.
The date of the photograph of Julius A. and Carrie Witt Hammond family is uncertain, but believed to be ca. 1878. Their oldest child Carrie died young, so this would be Luella W., Edna O., Gail and Sophronia Hale (b. 1868), and Merwin (b. 1869). This picture was among the souvenirs of Orson W. and Mary Eliza Hammond.
Julius A. remained an active member of the Methodist Church of Hanover and active in civic duties and served two years as a district Representative to the Illinois Legislature[9]. About 1894-5, Julius A. moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he died in 1902.
Sophronia Hale Hammond was the fifth daughter of Julius A. and Carrie Hammond. She married Charles Soyster, who was a wholesale salesman working through North Iowa. They had two children, Merwin H. ( b. ca. 1892), and Charles J. (b. ca. 1893). This picture was found in a memorial booklet published by her husband as a tribute after her death in 1898 in Sheldon, Iowa.
Edna O. Hammond, daughter of Julius A. and Carrie Hammond, married Prof. C. W. Edwards. He taught music in Minneapolis, to which Julius Hammond and his wife had moved in retirement. The included photo is not positively identified, but believed to be of Edna and her husband.
