Hammond Family Spotlight: Richard Pindell Hammond
Richard Pindell Hammond (1820-1891)
In 1820, Richard Pindell Hammond was born in Hagerstown, Maryland. In 1837, he was appointed as a cadet to West Point, the elite American military academy, by President Andrew Jackson, whom John Hays Hammond Sr. claimed was a friend of Dr. William Hammond, his grandfather.
According to Hammond Sr.’s autobiography, from which many of the family details in this article are derived, his father was an associate of famed Civil War Union general, William Tecumseh Sherman, while the two were students at West Point, and recommended him for a position on a tour of inspection of the South undertaken by Inspector General Quitman. Hammond Sr. claimed that he met General Sherman years later, and that he credited his inclusion on this tour as invaluable to him on his infamous “March to the Sea,” a “scorched earth” military campaign undertaken in 1864 against the Confederacy during the Civil War (1861 – 1865).
Richard Hammond served under General James Shields during the Mexican-American War (1846 – 1848), during which time he earned the rank of captain, and later, brevet major. He later went to California during the Gold Rush of 1849, where he had been appointed by the Army, alongside other members of his family. He eventually resigned from the Army on May 31, 1851. Over a decade later, after the Civil War broke out, his services were solicited by both the North and South in the conflict, but Hammond declined to take sides and remained retired from the military.
In San Francisco, Richard Hammond turned his eye to urban development, working as a surveyor and engineer, and helped develop the city of Stockton, California with Carlos Maria Weber. He was later elected to the State Assembly and chosen as the speaker of the House in 1852.
In the same year, Hammond Sr.’s mother, Sarah E. (Hays) Lea (1822 – 1867), a widow with a daughter named Lucy, made a trek to San Francisco to visit her brother, Colonel John Coffee Hays. It was here that she met Richard Hammond, and they were married in 1854. The following year, on March 31, 1855, John Hays Hammond was born. In addition to his half-sister, Lucy, Hammond Sr.’s siblings included three brothers, Harry, William, and Richard, and a sister, Mary-Elizabeth.
Richard Hammond would go on to attain the position of U.S. Collector of Customs at the port of San Francisco, California from 1853 to 1855. At the time of the Civil War, having rejected serving either side in the conflict, he became involved in mining interests in the Southwest. He was made president of the Democratic state convention in 1861, general superintendent of the San Francisco and San Jose railroad from 1866 to 1871, vice-president and later president of the California Pacific railroad in 1873, as well as serving as the president of of the San Francisco board of education, and a regent of the University of California. His last official position was as the Police Commissioner of San Francisco, which he attained shortly before his death on November 28, 1891.
