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The following were the recollections of the Hammond ancestors of Ulrich A. Watlington (Papa) and Emma Mai Hammond (Aunt Mai), taken in January of 1974.
I'll awake at dawn on the Sabbath morn,
For it is wrong to doze (Tis a sin to sleep) Holy time away.
With my lesson learned I have made it a rule,
Never to be late at the Sabbath School.
``This is a song my father would sing to us on Sunday morning'' -Emma Mai Hammond. Aunt Mai not only heard her father sing this, but believed it and sang it for her nieces and nephews.
O. W. Hammond worked in Texas on bridging and other carpenter work. Papa thinks he worked on a railroad bridging and station building crew.
O. W. said his father Ward K. married a second time after his children were older. O. W. said he ``married for money'' the second time. This marriage was in Fort Worth, Texas, and relatives in Hanover seemed not to know of it. Papa got the impression that another of O. W.'s brothers who was in the Federal Army settled in the south6.1.
Aunt Mai thinks her father worked around Houston and Dallas. Earlier he was teaching school and working at a carpentry shop in or near Hanover. From there he went to Texas where carpenters were greatly in demand.
He proposed by letter to Mary Eliza Jameson while in Texas in Dec. 1882, returned to Hanover and they married there on Sept. 20, 1883. They went to Texas for some years and they came to Tennessee from Texas. Aunt Mai thinks Mary Eliza returned to Hanover to visit relatives while O. W. built a little home on his brother Charles N. Hammond's place. He built this little tenant house on the Hart's Bridge road on the ridge west and across the sand creek from the division of the Hart's Bridge Rd. and the Roberts Road. This house stood until the 1940's or 1950's. It faced the Harts Bridge Road, between the road and the Curlin homeplace. Jennie Sophronia Hammond was born there on Sept. 9, 1887.
Charlie Hammond was a ``wheeler dealer'' and had a saw mill operating on his large land holding (845 acres) and wanted O. W. to buy in with him and work with him. O. W. didn't have the money to do so, and didn't like to speculate. He chose to buy a smaller, sorrier piece of land that he knew he could pay for.
On returning to Texas, O. W. hired out for at least one year as a sheep herder. He lived right out with the sheep and cared for them. But he didn't like the solitude and uncultured life of the shepherd. Aunt Mai and Papa agreed that Mary Eliza went to Texas with him for a while. Seems like they went back to Illinois and left her with relatives while he came to Tennessee and prepared for the future there.
The photo shows Orson Ward and Mary Eliza Jameson Hammond, Jennie S. Hammond, and Clara Matilda Hammond.
