BIOGRAPHY: Charles B. HAMM, Cambria County, PA Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Lynne Canterbury and Diann Olsen. Portions of this book were transcribed by Clark Creery, Martha Humenik, Betty Mirovich and Sharon Ringler. USGENWEB ARCHIVES (tm) NOTICE All documents placed in the USGenWeb Archives remain the property of the contributors, who retain publication rights in accordance with US Copyright Laws and Regulations. In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, these documents may be used by anyone for their personal research. They may be used by non-commercial entities so long as all notices and submitter information are included. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit. Any other use, including copying files to other sites, requires permission from the contributors PRIOR to uploading to the other sites. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/cambria/ ____________________________________________________________ From Wiley, Samuel T., ed. Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Cambria County, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Union Publishing Co., 1896, p. 306-8 ____________________________________________________________ CHARLES B. HAMM, proprietor of the Merchants' Hotel, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is one of the best-known and most successful hotel men in western Pennsylvania, and is always alive to the best interests of his city. His first success was achieved when he was little more than twenty-four years of age. Mr. Hamm made an excellent beginning in life by being born on January 1, 1853. His entrance was made at Clarion, in Clarion county, Pennsylvania. He received a good common-school education, and is also a graduate of Dayton academy, in Armstrong county. Vigorously striking out on his own account, when but little past his majority, he "went West," and for over two years managed the Post Traders' store at Fort Saunders, in Wyoming territory, and in that school of experience his business instincts were thoroughly aroused, and the hard knocks incident to frontier life inured him to the sometimes unpleasant ways of the world, at the same time broadening his views. In 1875 he returned to Pennsylvania, and in 1877 took a clerkship in the celebrated Du Bois House, at Du Bois, in Clearfield county. Six months later he was made manager of the same hotel, and remained in that position for two years. Then he went to Pittsburg and clerked in various hotels of the best class until 1887, when he opened and ran the Albemarle for a year. Then occurred the excellent opening which took him to Johnstown in 1888, as proprietor of the old Merchants' Hotel, which he purchased from Charles Kropp. An almost unparalleled misfortune was soon to overtake him, however, for in the great flood of May 31, 1889, the hotel was destroyed and all that he had ventured in the city was swept away. He did not lose courage, however, but luckily pulled himself together, and in 1890 went to Atlantic City, where, for one season, he operated the Hotel Albion, which contained two hundred and twenty-four sleeping-rooms. Johnstown always remained in his mind, but the ruined city was slow in rebuilding, so in the autumn of 1890 he purchased the Zimmerman House at Greensburg, and presided over the destinies of that popular resort until 1893, when he sold out to excellent advantage and returned to the city from which he had been so rudely driven by fate. In the meantime the "New Merchants'" had been built on the site of the old, a very much larger and superior hotel in every way, and without doubt the finest in western Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburg. Therefore it was that the year 1894 saw him re-established at "the old stand," under the most pleasant conditions; and there he is today, and for what all his hosts of friends hope may be a bright, happy and successful future. Mr. Hamm, whose business career has thus been briefly noted, is a son of Daniel B. and Susannah D. (Hoffman) Hamm. His remote paternal ancestors were German, but his grandfather, and even his great-grandfather, were born in America, the Hamms being one of the oldest families in Clarion county, where the grandfather, Christian Hamm, was a farmer, and later, a contractor and builder. Daniel B. Hamm, the father, was born in Clarion county in 1812. He was well educated in the old subscription schools of the period, and, to be more helpful to his father in business, he learned the carpenter trade, but later drifted into the mercantile and hotel business himself, so that his son was "to the manor born." Politically the father was a staunch democrat, and being a man of force and influence in the community he was elected to the office of sheriff, serving from 1852 to 1855. He died in 1864, after a successful career. Philip Hoffman, the maternal grandfather, was of New England stock, but in early life removed to Danville, Montour county, Pennsylvania, and settled in Clarion county, where he died in 1871. He was a merchant and a local preacher of the Methodist denomination. To complete the personnel of Mr. Hamm's family, his wife, who busily and gracefully presides with him over the fortunes of the Merchants' Hotel, was Miss Mollie M. Cover, youngest daughter of Mr. William Cover, the latter being now, at the venerable age of eighty years, among, the oldest members of one of Cambria county's first families, honored for his true worth and manliness, and loved by all who know him - our friend's best friends, and therefore linked with him in this brief and imperfect sketch.