OBITUARY: Albert Ernest Hammond, Jackson County, Oregon ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/or/orfiles.htm ********************************************************************************* Transcribed and formatted for use in USGenWeb Archives by Elizabeth Corethers 4 Dec 2002 ***************************************************************** **************** HAMMOND, Albert Ernest, Medford (Oregon) Mail Tribune, Friday, 24 Apr 1925 Albert Ernest Hammond, the oldest son of Anson P. Hammond and Elizabeth Schermerhorn Hammond, was born on a farm in Johnson township, Lagrange county, Indiana, on February 5, 1855. On his paternal side he was descended from distinguished early Americans. His great grandfather was one Richard Lawson, an Englishman of noble family who was an officer in the army of Lord Cornwallis during the War of the Revolution. During or after one of the principal battles early in the War, he decided that the colonists were fighting a righteous battle, and he left the British army and threw all his efforts, fortune and his fighting experience on the side of the colonists. He was reported as among the missing in the British records, and naturally never dared to make any claims for his estates and property in England. He married a woman from Connecticut, and had only one daughter, who married William, one of the ten sons of Benjamin Hammond, of English descent and also a veteran of the Revolutionary war. William Hammond served his country through the War of 1812. One of their sons, Anson P. Hammond, married Elizabeth Schermerhorn, a granddaughter of Aaron Schermerhorn who served in the colonial armies during the War of the Revolution, and was a descendant of the old Knickerbocker Dutch who early settled in New York. Aaron Schermerhorn received a patent for his services and placed the same upon lands in the Mohawk valley in the state of New York. Elizabeth Hammond's father was also a nephew of General Israel Putnam, and her mother, Ann Johnson was a direct descendant of the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620. Albert E. Hammond, the oldest child of this union, spent his early school days in Indiana and in southern Wisconsin, where his family had moved. He went to college at Asbury academy, now known as DePauw University in Indiana, and after finishing his course there joined his family in Yankton, Dakota territory. His early engineering work was spent on the plains of the Dakotas; and as this was during the days when the Sioux Indians were on the war path, he and his p arty were frequently chased in to headquarters by the scalp hunting savages. It was during this time that he witnessed the departure from Yankton of General Custer and his troops for his momentous campaign against the Sioux, which had such a disastrous ending at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. His father's family had moved out west to the little city of Ashland, in the state of Oregon, and Albert Hammond followed them there along in the early [18]'80s. He taught school for awhile and operated a saw mill, and tried his luck at mining and other things in southern Oregon, and finally7 became one of the engineers under the supervision of John T. Hurlburt, and took a very active part in the building of the O. & c. Railroad over the Siskiyou mountains. This is now a part of the main line of the Southern Pacific, and is one of the finest and most difficult piece4s of mountain railway engineering in this country. After the heavy part of this work was completed he went with Mr. Hurlburt to Washington where he helped locate and construct the line of the Northern Pacific across the Cascade mountains through the famous Stampede Pass. This is also one of the stupendous engineering feats in American railway history. His work here was so well done that he was sent into Montana with the title of assistant chief engineer of the Northern Pacific railways, and for a number of years was in active charge of all the work of that company in western Montana, which involved the construction of the lines to Butte, Helena and many of the principal branch lines. In 1889 Mr. Hammond married Pauline E. Rea in San Francisco and removed with his family to Portland, Oregon, where he followed the calling of his profession for a long period of years, and left his mark in the way of the construction of many well known public utilities in the northwest. During this period he built many of the first electric street car lines in Portland, including the Mount Tabor, Woodlawn, Woodstock, the Albina lines and many others that are now in active use. He made the first location for the railroad line down the Columbia river between Portland and Astoria, Oregon. >From about 1898 on for several years he was associated with E. E. Lytle, and during this time he located and built the Columbia Southern railroad from Biggs to Shaniko, Oregon, and was its chief engineer and general manager for several years. During this time he also located the line from the mouth of the Klickitat river to Goldendale, Washington; also made the first railroad location lines through central Oregon and those up the Canyon of the Deschutes river, which surveys were later covered with lines constructed by the Hill interests and those of the Union Pacific. During the time that George E. Chamberlain was governor of Oregon, Mr. Hammond was state engineer, and the first steps toward the immense irrigation projects in the Deschutes valley were planned and started under his direction. He also built the Portage railroad at the Celilo Rapids on the Columbia river, and supervised a number of other public works of great importance. After his retirement as state engineer he had charge of the first construction work at the upper end of the great Celilo canal. His later years in Oregon were spent principally in consulting engineering work and in mining in various parts of the northwest. In 1918 he took up his residence in California and lived in that state until his death on March 7, 1925. His life was all spent in the great west, and his work was all constructive. He was one of the best of those strong, pioneer men who trod the unbeaten paths of the wilderness, and made it possible for the following generations to obtain the benefits of the wonderful resources of the western country. A fitting epitaph for Mr. Hammond would be that engraved on the stone that marks the last resting place of Robert Louis Stevenson: "Under the side and starry sky,/Dig the grave and let me lie./Glad did I live and gladly die,/And I laid me down with a will./This be the verse you grave for me:/Here he lies where he longed to be;/Home is the sailor, home from the sea/And the hunter home from the hill."