Hammond Graveyard, Tangipahoa Parish, LA. Submitted to the USGenWeb Archives by Carol Nelson, June, 2000 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ************************************************ Hammond Graveyard; The Hammond Vindicator, Hammond, Louisiana, Nov, 5, 1937. Source: Film 395/Reel #7; 1 January 1937-31 December 1937 Hill Memorial Library, L.S.U., Baton Rouge, LA HAMMOND GRAVEYARD WHERE PETER HAMMOND, IT'S FOUNDER, IS BURIED By Thomas S. Ellis Fronting 100 feet on East Charles Street, one of Hammond's better residential thoroughfares, and extending south 50 feet between parallel lines, shaded by a giant Live Oak that extends its branches across the sidewalk to the street line, lies a plot or ground that has never been, nor will it ever be, built upon. It pays no taxes, nor will it ever pay taxes, to the State, Parish or City. The predatory eye of the assessor sees it but passes it reverently by. It is the last earthly resting place of Peter Hammond, the pioneer for whom the city is named, who was buried there in 1870 at the age of 72 years. A few years late, Caroline, Peter's wife, was laid beside him, and then Maria, an unmarried daughter, was buried beside her mother. A single marble monument marks the three graves. Also buried there are Sarah, Peter Hammond's daughter, and her husband F. Robertson; another daughter, Clorinda, wife of E. DeSouge, and a granddaughter, Eliza, and her husband, W. S. Wall. Eight graves, nine if we count the one, unmarked, of a little negro slave, a pet of Peter Hammond, who he buried there in the early sixties. This plot lies in the square bounded by East Charles, Olive, Thomas and Holly Streets, designated as Block 7 of Adams Addition to the City of Hammond, two blocks from the business section of the city. By two acts of sale, one passed in 1891, the other in 1894, the Hammond heirs sold the surrounding land to J. S. Adams, but the graveyard was reserved and still stands in the names of these heirs. It is flanked on either side by residences, children play on the sidewalk along its front and automobiles hurry by over the paved surface of Charles Street, but behind its frail and sagging wire fence the hallowed spot lies unmolested and secure. The ancient--500 years old? 700 years old? no one knows-- spreads its arms protectingly over those who sleep there. Each morning the woodbirds sing a requiem from its leafy boughs and at night-fall, the evening breeze whispers an orison through its swaying branches. Peter Hammond was born in Sweden in 1798,the eldest of a large family of children. When fourteen years old, to relieve the family of his support and to seek his fortune in the young, and growing nation across the seas, he sailed for the United States. This country was then engaged in the war of 1812 with England and the ship on which young Hammond sailed was captured by a British frigate and he, with all on board, was made a prisoner and confined in Dartmoor, England's military prison in Devonshire. While there the prisoners one day engaged in a boisterous game of ball which the guards, either wantonly or mistakenly, deemed an attempt at escape. They fired indiscriminately into the mass of prisoners, killing and wounding many of them but Hammond was unhurt and subsequently escaped and smuggled out of England on a sailing vessel. After some years at sea, where he became an expert rigger and sailmaker, he landed in New Orleans and from there went to Wadesboro on one of the schooners plying between the two points. Under the liberal homestead laws then in force and by purchase at a few cents an acre, he acquired large tracts of primeval pine forest land, on one of which Hammond now stands. From resin drawn from the pine trees he manufactured pitch, then in active demand by ship owners and builders, which he shipped to New Orleans in large quantities. In 1825 he cleared a place in the dense forest and in this clearing built his permanent home, a spacious story-and-a-half house built of handhewed oak logs. The site of this house is near the intersection of East Robert and Chestnut Streets in what is now Block 4 of Adams Addition to Hammond. In the same block, near the banks of Ponchatoula Creek, can be seen all that remains of one of Hammond's pitch pits. To this home Hammond brought his bride, Carolone Tucker of Boston, Mass, whom he married in the settlement of Ponchatoula, and here his children, one son and five daughters, were born and reared. Some three-hundred yards west-by-south from his house stood a large oak tree near which ran a rutted woods-road, the highway from Covington, passing through Wadesboro and Springfield and on to Baton Rouge. In the shade of this tree Hammond spent much of his time exchanging news and views with travelers along the highway, many of whom enjoyed the hospitality of his home, and trading with the friendly Chocotaws, a lump of rock salt, or a tablespoonful of the refined condiment, for a quarter of venison, and other mutually satisfactory transactions. The spot became a favorite one with Hammond and when a delicate slave-child died, his especial pet, he buried it there, the first grave in the Hammond Graveyard, a striking expression of a Southerner's love for his slaves. The potential wealth of that section of Louisiana lying on both sides of a line running north from Pass Manchac to the Mississippi line, agriculture, lumber, brick-clay, naval stores and gravel, was recognized at an early date but was dead-locked by lack of transportation facilities. To reach New Orleans and the sea commodities must be hauled by ox teams to Wadesboro or Madisonville and then by water route to New Orleans. There was no out-let to the north. A railroad was needed but the seemingly insurmountable obstacles presented by the swamps bordering Lake Ponchartrain and the "Floating Prairie" between Pass Manchac and Ponchatoula, discouraged investment in the enterprise. Many plans and surveys were made and rejected until, in 1835, a survey made by George T. Dunbar, a civil engineer connected with the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, threw the light of feasibility on the project. Capital then appeared, a right-of-way was secured, construction work started, engineering problems deemed insoluble were solved and, in 1854, nineteen years after Dunbar made his survey, the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railway was completed from New Orleans to the Mississippi line. There it connected with the Mississippi Central running to Jackson. "Grasshopper" locomotives with upright boilers and cylinders, their fireboxes stoked with pine-knots gathered along the right- of-way, belching flames and smoke from pot-bellied smoke-stacks. hurtled short, flimsily built passenger coaches and freight cars over flat rails at the furious speed of sixteen miles an hour, and the transportation problem was solved. The point where the Jackson Railroad, as it was the popularly called, crossed the Covington-Baton Rouge Highway, near the present intersection of Thomas Street and the Illinois central Railroad, was at first a flagstation known as Hammond's Crossing. Through the effort of Charles E. Cate and others, who bought land from Hammond at 35-cents an acre and widely advertised the climate and other natural advantages of this section of Louisiana, Hammond's Crossing soon became the village of Hammond and a regular railroad stop. Some of this land, known as Hyer's Survey, was plotted into blocks and lots, streets were laid out along which were planted the oak trees that now beautify the city, and when Thomas W. Kidder built his hotel on the site of the present Postoffice and established a lunch stand at the depot, "Hammond, next stop, five minutes," became the outstanding station of the line. In the early seventies the writer made frequent trips between New Orleans and Amite. Each trip was a new thrill, but the thrill of thrills came when my father assisted me down the car steps and led me to ham sandwiches, pumpkin pie and coffee at Mr. Kidder's lunch counter. Hammond was first incorporated in 1889 by act before a Notary Public under the then existing laws, the corporation comprising Sections 23, 23, 25, and 26 of Township 6 South of Range 7 East, a two-mile square with its center near the present intersection of West Robert and North Pine Streets. It was reincorporated in 1899 under the new laws governing the incorporation of towns and cities, but neither its name nor its territorial limits was changed. Could Peter Hammond return today, speed from New Orleans to Hammond on the "stream-Lined" Panama Limited, drive a Packard limousine through the multi-colored lights of the City's White Way where once he groped his way along a dim woods-road, witness the sale of a quarter-of-million-dollars worth of strawberries in a single evening, his reactions would be interesting. But, we would not call him back. His life was full and useful. His memory is revered. May he rest in peace.