CLARK H. HAMMOND

The venerable pioneer of Clark County, now in his seventy-ninth year, is President of the State Bank of Martinsville, owner of 1,000 acres of the agricultural lands in the county, still bright and active, and, somewhat eccentric, is altogether one of the most remarkable of its characters. As he says, he "has dug all his wealth out of the ground," meaning, not from any mines, but from the surface soil through agricultural processes, and the greatest satisfaction he takes today is not in the performance of any financial or public duties which devolve upon him, but in the homely, every-day work of the farm.

Mr. Hammond was born in Rutland County, Vt., on the 21st of April, 1829, the son of Alanson and Sallie (Tarbell) Hammond, both also natives of the Green Mountain State, the father's day of birth being September 23, 1802, the mother's, February 22, 1804. Alanson Hammond, who was a farmer, .came west in 1837 and entered 300 acres of Government land in what is now Clark County, buying outright, at the same time, the forty acres upon which the old home of Clark H. Hammond still stands. Here the father died, July 7, 1846, having by hardy industry cleared his land of timber, brought from it abundant crops and made a nice homestead of a virgin tract; his wife had preceded him in 1842, the couple being highly honored by their few neighbors of those pioneer days for their worth and faithfulness to the interests of the now country which they had made their home.

Amid such crude surroundings began the eighty-year-old life of Clark H. Hammond, and they just suited his healthy, rugged temperament. He obtained very little education from the uncertain subscription schools which he attended, but was naturally eager to learn of practical things, was always a reader of instructive newspapers and magazines and is now a well informed man. In 1857 he married his cousin, Roxana Hammond, a Vermont woman born May 25, 1834, and the second oldest child of Lyman Clark and Jane E. (Dawley) Hammond, her parents coming to this county when she was three years old, at the same time as her husband's people. Lyman Hammond was a highly respected farmer, well known and fairly prosperous.

Three sons and one daughter were born to Clark and Roxana Hammond: Albert C., who is married and farming in Dolsor Township, this county; George A., a married farmer of Parker Township; Howard F., of Dolsor Township, also married, and Clara A., who makes her home with her parents. Despite his age Mr. Hammond does all the required work around the farm and takes care of his stock. He is rather grey, but altogether a hale, hearty wonderfully preserved old man. His politics, he says, were determined by the circumstance that after his father's death he was reared by a kind man who was a strong Democrat. But although Mr. Hammond is a stanch Democrat himself and has served as Supervisor several terms he would rather farm than legislate. Never a regular church member, he has never gambled. Is temperate and strictly honest and moral, and has held to the faith that his chief concern should be to well order his present life.

Original in his ideas and ways, Mr. Hammond is an especially interesting character when he touches upon the pioneer days of Clark County, when wild game and beasts were familiar and neighbors were not so plentiful. When he first commenced to farm he hauled his produce by wagon to Chicago, his first business venture being in partnership with his brother in 1846, when they bought up several wagon loads of apples, sold them in that market and bartered their fruit for white fish and salt. Their next venture was to take two horses to the muddy city upon which they made the superb profit of twenty-five dollars. They hauled their wheat to Terre Haute, Ind., selling it for fifty cents a bushel; there was no dollar wheat in those days. In 1850 Mr. Hammond, in common with most hardy, ambitious young men who reached their majority, made the ox-team trip across the plains to California, returning by boat, via the Panama Route. The three years which he thus spent in the West cured him of all desire to roam or to engage in any occupation except it had a relation to agriculture. Thus able, from personal experience, to picture the country when It was raw and unformed, he has not only watched with fond and proud eye its development into fertile farms, pretty hamlets and opulent cities, but has the satisfaction in his declining years of knowing that he himself has been an Important factor in this wonderful transformation, and that he has retained the unqualified respect of his associates and friends.