My mother was a Hammond: Jennie Sophronia Hammond, born Sept. 9, 1887 in a small frame house that her father, Orson Ward Hammond had built on the southeast end of his brother's farm along the Hart's Bridge Road, Madison Co., Tenn. Her Uncle Charlie Hamond had come to Tennessee some years before and had purchased a large acreage of low lying lands on the south bank of the Forked Deer River, South Fork, opposite Jackson, Tenn., and some four miles outside the city limits. He was engaged with farming, clearing, and lumbering on the property along with his young sons and his wife, Edna Dean. They had all come from Jo Daviess County, Illinois, where they had grown to manhood and married.
Charles N. Hammond was born in 1835, had farmed with his father, Ward Kingsbury Hammond, and had inherited the 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. On the 14 of Nov. 1866 he had married a neighbor's daughter, Edna C. Dean, daughter of Walter Dean. His first three 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 in Tennessee and Kentucky, before being chosen for the U.S. Army's 1st U.S. V.V. Engineers, organized in Chattanooga, Tenn. in mid-1864. With this group he served until the end of the conflict, most of the time with the Quartermaster Department of the Unit. 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.
Orson Ward Hammond, the youngest son of the union between Ward Kingsbury Hammond and Sophronia Hale, and the only child born to them in Illinois, 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 Hammond farm, he purchased the O. W. Hamond 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 on the Charles Hammond place but Clara Matilda was born Jan. 7, 1890 in a two room log cabin beside a branch stream of Meridian Creek in the center of the little 60 acre farm.
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 (b. Dec. 27, 1892) 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 Grandpa Watlington also. His daughter Clara Matilda had married a neighboring farmer, James Leven Harton, and had established on the Harton farm about a mile distant.
We know very little about Ward K. Hammond, father of O. W. and Charles. We know from the census records that he was born in Vermont; his wife in Glastonbury, Conn. Sophronia Hale's ancestry is a matter of record on the Hale line back to 1615; and two of her ancestors were Revolutionary War soldiers, Talcott and Piper families. Ward K. Hammond is the son of Calvin Hammond, who was the son of Nathaniel Hammond, (baptized Sept. 16, 1733) and Dorthy Tucker. We are able to link Calvin to five generations of Hammonds in New England, going back to one Thomas of Lavenham, England, who died in 1589, and whose son Thomas came to Hingham, then Newton, Mass., before 1636, dying in 1675.
Sophronia Hale, mother of Orson Ward Hammond, was from an old New England family that traces its ancestry back to one Samuel Hale, who in 1615 married Mary Welles. From this second marriage of Samuel came four sons: Jonathan, David, Joseph, Benjamin. In 1717 Samuel's son Jonathan married Sarah H. Talcott and they gave birth to three daughters and five sons: Sarah, Jonathan, David, Elizur, David, Penelope, Theodore, Prudence.
Theodore Hale married Rachel Talcott, whose father was Elizur Talcott, a Revolutionary War soldier, in 1758. One of their children was Rachel, who married Jason Hammond, the eldest brother of Calvin Hammond, in 1788. By 1812 they were early settlers in Summit Co., Illinois where Jonathan Hale had gone also, and served in the War of 1812. Other children were Lucy, Jehiel, Ruth, Jehiel, Theodore, Sarah, Samuel, Solomon, and Jonathan.
Jonathan was born in 1777, in Glastonbury, Conn., just south of Hartford, and on the banks of the Connecticut River. In 1802, he married Mercy S. Piper in Glastonbury, Conn. Her father was Sergeant Samuel Piper in the Revolutionary forces. He left Glastonbury, home of his father, with his young family in 1810 for Ohio. Evidently Jason Hammond and his sister Rachel had already emigrated to Ohio, and they went to settle near them. Jonathan was the tenth child born to Theodore and Rachel Talcott; their last child of record was Abigail.
Sophronia Hale was born in the same house in which her father
Jonathan was born, on a large farm along the east bank of the
Connecticut River at Glastonbury, Conn. The home was built by her
grandfather Theodore about 1775, and was a three story, large frame
house, made for New England winter living. Since she was born about
1803, she must have been a child of six or seven when the long trek
to Ohio was made. Jonathan and Sophronia prospered there, but
Mercy S. Piper died after giving birth to three girls and three boys:
| Sophronia | m. Ward K. Hammond |
| William | m. (1) Sally C. Upson (no issue), |
| m. (2) Harriet Carlton, | |
| m. (3) Adaline R. Thompson | |
| Pamelia | m. William C. Oviatt |
| Andrew | m. Jane Mather |
| Abigail | evidently died young |
| James M. | m. (1) Sarah Allen, and (2) Maria J. Allen. |
By his second wife, widow Sarah Cozad Mather, Jonathan had the following children: Jonathan D., Mercy Ann, and Samuel, (b. March 9, 1838) m. Sept. 22, 1867 to Vira Gould.
The Hale family grew and prospered around the portage town of Akron, and the Jonathan Hale homestead, built in 1826-27, became a place of local interest by 1906 when Charles O. Hale was entertaining summer guests in the old home. Othello W. Hale and relatives were planning a centennial for the Hale tribe in Akron in 1910. One of the daughters of Andrew Hale, Sophronia J. Hale, married Samuel J. Ritchie, and built a $100,000 palatial home in old Akron about the turn of the century. Some of these wealthier families helped gather and disseminate the family history.