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b. June 25, 1835
bp. Summit Co., Illinois
m. November 14, 1866, Edna C. Dean
d. October 10, 1891
pd. Madison Co., Tennessee
Charles Newell Hammond was born in 1835, the sixth child of Ward K. and Sophronia. He had farmed with his father, Ward Kingsbury Hammond, and had inherited a family farm near Hanover, Ill., or rather the homestead. He had a total of 224 acres of land in his name on the District Platte map of 1873 for Hanover township.
He served with the 96th Volunteer Illinois Infantry in Kentucky and Tennessee in the Civil War and later volunteered for a Pioneer Corps that later became the first organized Army Engineer Unit. The Engineer group was to aid in construction projects, forts, bridges and roads and to reconstruct the railroads the Army needed. At his post in Chattanooga, Tenn., he served as a quartermaster in ordering, receiving and dispatching building materials to the projects of the War in 1863-65 as the Federal Army moved on to Atlanta, Ga., and beyond. Several notes and letters from him were preserved by his family and relatives and included in the previous chapter.
After his discharge from service Charles N. returned to Hanover, Ill., and in 1866 married Miss Edna C. Dean, daughter of Walter Dean, and returned to farming. Their first four children were born to them in Illinois.
But Charles had served in a warmer climate during the ``War of the Rebellion'' as he put it; the Civil War as we know it. He had served with two different Illinois outfits and the U.S. Army in Tennessee and Kentucky. After three winters in the South, the winters in Illinois seemed long, and he got the itch to move on, as his ancestors before him. They sold their farm in Illinois and moved to Madison Co., Tenn., about 1877. His brother Edwin O. had served with the Federal Forces there in 1862 after the Battles of Shiloh and Corinth, Miss.
Charles and Edna bought land near Jackson, Tenn. -- about 900 acres of low lying timbered and farming land on the south bank of the Forked Deer River, opposite Jackson, Tenn., and some four miles outside the city limits -- and harvested timber there for the next several years. They had been well received and they encouraged Charles' youngest brother, Orson Ward Hammond, to come from Texas and join him in his venture, which he did in 1886. However Orson had worked at carpentry since 1873 in various places and preferred to try his hand at farming. More capital was needed to pursue Charles and Edna's dreams and was hard to find.
Orson W. helped build a nice house for his brother Charles on old Pinson Road, on the high knoll across the road from the Beller home of the 1930-60's. It was at this place that Charlie met a tragic death from a gunshot wound in 1891.
When Charles died, Orson W. thought it was a suicide and said so. The wife Edna Dean insisted it was foul play by a neighbor, a negro man named Alf Manning (Jim Manning's father). They had a trial but couldn't prove that Alf Manning was involved. The family did convince the insurance companies of the ``reasonable doubt'' that it was a suicide. The collected insurance, a rather large amount for those days, helped save the large land holdings for the family. But the hard feelings between Orson W. and his sister-in-law Edna kept the two families from any close relationship in ensuing years.
Alf Manning was later granted a part of the Hammond estate. Uncle Samuel Jameson of Hanover visited often in Tennessee and he told Ulrich A. of the dispute, as did Orson W. in later years. Ulrich A. Watlington also knew Jim Manning well, and got enough news out of him to confirm the main issues of the case.
Charles left five young children and Edna. The children continued on the property and prospered. Descendants are now prominent leaders in the city of Jackson and Memphis, Tenn.
Dora Etta and Ina Dell Hammond were daughters of Charles N. and Edna Dean. Born in Jo Daviess County, Ill., they grew up in Madison Co., Tenn. Frederick Hammond, Sr. (b. 1873, in Illinois) was a son of Charles N. and Edna Dean Hammond. He too grew up in Madison Co., Tenn., and married Lottie Young, daughter of the Bemis Mill superintendent. They raised a family in Bemis, Tenn.
