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b. June 6, 1846
bp. Delaware, Ohio
m. September 20, 1883, Mary Eliza Jameson
d. 1930
pd. Madison Co., Tennessee
pb. Lester's Chapel Cem., Madison Co., Tennessee
Orson Ward Hammond, the youngest son of the union between Ward Kingsbury Hammond and Sophronia Hale, tenth of their children, was too young for the War. He was born June 6, 1846 and stayed with his parents until after the death of his mother in 1872 or 73. Then he left his school teaching in the district schools and went to Texas to follow the carpenter and building trade, of which he was a master. In Texas he lived and worked as a bachelor following the building trade for more than ten years, 1873-1883, a part of this time working to build bridges, section houses and depots along the new railways of Texas. He wrote in 1883 that he had worked in thirty different counties in Texas and had come to choose it for his future home, preferably in west central Texas where the winters were mild and the sheep herding business seemed to prosper.
He established a correspondence with the daughter of a neighbor in Jo Daviess Co., Mary Eliza Jameson, daughter of Samuel Jameson and Matilda Craig, his third wife. Mary had been one of his pupils in the school at Hanover, and he remembered her as a fourteen year old girl, but ten years had passed. They courted by letter, and she kept some of the letters for the family. They were married on September 20, 1883 in the Hanover Methodist Church, the place of worship for Deans, Jamesons, and Hammonds for a generation. Then they returned to Texas and tried the sheep business. Evidently they weren't content; the details we don't know. We do know that Charles N. wanted Orson W. to come join forces with him in Tennessee. Mary Eliza went back to Illinois for a few months until a house could be prepared in Tennessee, and then she was brought to the farm home on the Hart's Bridge Road, across the road from where Charles D. Rivers owned a farm in the 1940's, on the high ground near the sand branch which may have been the eastern border of Charles Hammond's land. As we understand, Orson did not buy the land, but built the home as a tenant home until he should decide what to do for himself.
Charles was evidently running a big operation, and needed Orson, ``Ortie,'' to help with it. But Charles may have over-extended--he was attempting big things and needed credit, money, and operators for the farm, saw mill, and lumbering. Orson W. did not have capital to invest, and soon decided to go it alone on a place he could afford to buy. He was a carpenter by trade but wanted to try his hand at other things also. After about a year or so on the land, he purchased the O. W. Hammond farm, now cut across by the U.S. Hwy. 45, south of Jackson, and used by the Watlington Brothers as headquarters for their construction and lumber business in recent years. Jennie S. was born Sept. 9, 1887 on the Charles Hammond place but Clara Matilda was born Jan. 7, 1890 in their new home. This was a two room log cabin beside a branch stream of Meridian Creek in the center of the little sixty acre farm. Emma Mai, their third daughter, was born there on Dec. 26, 1892.
O. W. Hammond piddled at farming, fruit growing, vegetable growing for the city, and ended up with a sizable dairy operation on the farm. After 1913 he had the help of his son-in-law, Ulrich A. Watlington, and Jennie. He continued to carpenter, building a box house for Ulrich and Jennie on the farm, a large frame house for his family on a rise of ground to the east of the old log house. (This frame house still stands in 1997), and he was the master carpenter and cabinet maker on the little Lester's Chapel Methodist Church. He and James Wm. Pacaud, his neighbor up the hill, were instrumental in helping to get the congregation organized there and in raising funds through a community barbecue for the materials to build the little chapel. Grandpa Hammond built the pews, the chancel rail and the pulpit for the Chapel, as well as helping with the raising of the walls and roof.
O. W. buried his wife at the entrance of the Lesters Chapel Cemetery in 1918, and reserved a spot for himself. His daughter, Emma Mai continued to make a comfortable home for him in the ``big house'' on the hill until his death in 1930. For some time before that though, he had depended on Ulrich and Jennie for the major tasks of managing the farm and dairy, with the help of Michael R. Watlington (Ulrich's father) also.
