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Old Road circa 1910 |
On a frigid Thursday morning on the last day of January in 1952, Edgar A. Hammond, a man who lived all of his life on his Old Road farm, died at a nursing home in Eliot. He was a month into his 81st year and with his death came an end to 253 continuous years in which men with the Hammond name would be associated with that part of Joseph Hammond's original Bay Lands estate along the "Old Road". Edgar was the last of the line as he was unmarried, and all his male cousins had moved away from the ancestral lands. The Hammond girls married into other local families and also moved away, their Hammond roots becoming intertwined with other old families of Eliot and beyond.
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Bay Lands 1699 |
The house or house site of Joseph Hammond is pictured at the top of this article. The current address is 152 Old Road. This house may have been a rebuild of the original. More research would need to be done to determine this. But it is likely this was the original site of Joseph Hammond's Old Road homestead. In 1753 Joseph's father Joseph died and left him the property on which he was currently residing.
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Will of Joseph Hammond 1751 |
Joseph Hammond who established the homestead on Old Road married Mary Adams in 1722. They had a large family of 3 daughters and 5 sons but only two sons lived past childhood, Thomas, born in 1737 and Christopher, born in 1740. Thomas served as a Lieutenant in the American Revolution in Captain Elisha Shapleigh's Company attached to Colonel Joseph Storer's Regiment that was part of the Saratoga Campaign in 1777.
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Surrender of Burgoyne 1777 |
Joseph Hammond divided his land between Thomas and Christopher in his will of 1772. Christopher sold his share in 1790 and moved north to Berwick and Thomas kept his half of the Old Road homestead after his father died in 1779. William Fogg writes about 1850 that Thomas lived in the house where his grandson Daniel was living in 1850. This would be the house currently at 162 Old Road. Thomas married Mary Rogers, the daughter of the Reverend John Rogers in 1763. They had a small family, a daughter Mary born in 1764 and a son Joseph born in 1768. Mary married William Jones of Portsmouth in 1784. Mary and William built a house down the road which is the house at 170 Old Road.
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1784 House & Old Acre circa 1910 |
1780 - 1820
Mary and William had a son, born in their new Old Road home, named William, but after a few years relocated to Portsmouth. Their son William would become a successful merchant and have a daughter Elizabeth who married Alexander Hamilton Ladd and lived in the Moffat-Ladd house in Portsmouth. Mary and William sold their house to her younger brother Joseph.
Joseph married Mary Staples in 1789. Joseph and Mary had a large family and four of their sons settled on the Old Road homestead. The oldest son Daniel Rogers, was born in 1791. Capt. Pierpont Hammond in 1793 died at the age of 42 in 1835, Joseph was born in 1796, and Thomas was born in 1803.
Daniel R. Hammond married Sally Remick in 1817 and lived in his grandfather's house with his own family. They had three girls, Mary, Susan, and Eliza, born in 1821, 1824, and 1830. They lived at the house at 162 Old Road.
Joseph Hammond
Joseph Hammond married Sarah Frost in 1820 and lived in the original home of his great grandfather at 152 Old Road. This home originally was owned by his brother Capt. Pierpont Hammond who died tragically in New Orleans in 1835. Joseph and Mary had 6 children, three boys and three girls. All of their children left the family homestead.
Thomas Hammond
Thomas Hammond married Rosanna Goodwin in 1825. They had 8 children, but only one, Daniel Goodwin Hammond stayed on the Old Road homestead. They lived in the 1784 Hammond house at 170 Old Road. Thomas went to California briefly during the 1849 Gold Rush.
1860 - 1952
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170 Old Road "1784 House" |
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Daniel Hammond |
Mary & Susan Hammond
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162 Old Road "Old Acre" |
Joseph & Sarah Hammond
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152 Old Road |
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