John Hammond was born on the Isle of Wight, England, on 5 December 1643, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Hammond. He died in Annapolis, Maryland, on 24 November 1707 and is buried in the St. Anne's Parish churchyard. He was brother-in-law to Cornelius Howard, having married his sister Mary, the daughter of Matthew Howard and Anne Hall. This source indicates that Hammond had four sons, Thomas, John, Charles, and William, but this source lists also daughters Mary and Elizabeth. We are descended from Mary, or Mary Katherine, who married Cornelius Howard, Jr., son of Cornelius and Elizabeth Howard.
Because in his youth Hammond was a Quaker, he apparently declined to bear arms, a stance that may have led to a criminal conviction around age 19. But later in life he became a member of the Church of England and assumed a high rank in the local militia, as indicated in this passage found here:
The refusal of John Hammond, son of Thomas, to bear arms in 1662, because of religious convictions and before his death attaining the highest military grade known under Provincial years is one of the paradoxes which is found in human nature or family history. He was definitely a member of the Quaker Church, as ample proof exists to dispute any arguments to the contrary. The Quakers with their peculiar and arbitrary beliefs would not fight, yet at the same time they did not reject their protection and benefits which the Loyalists offered them. The year of his conviction was 1662, when Charles, 3d Baron of Baltimore, reigned as Lord Proprietary and ruled as Governor of the Province concurrently. Extant records do not indicate that he participated in the Fendell [sic] Rebellion in 1659-60. Circumstances are such that he and his father had not arrived in the Province. After his condemnation as a Quaker he was convinced of the virtues and benefits in the ancient faith of the English Church, became a vestryman of the court church in Annapolis and presented St. Anne’s Parish with a Bible upon his death.
Hammond may have been married twice, both to women named Mary. The first wife may have been Mary Howard, daughter of Matthew and Anne Howard. His second wife was apparently Mary, the widow of Thomas Roper. But there appears to be some confusion as to the identities of the two women or even whether there were two at all. More details are found here.
In his 40s, Hammond apparently had another run-in with the law, possibly related to his political sympathies in a proprietary colony, as indicated here:
In 1685 two years after his condemnation he received his first public office of trust, then being fully 42 years of age. The Province was still under the government of the Calverts, yet the Liberals were becoming strongly entrenched politically, so it cannot be assumed that the honour emulated from Lord Baltimore. In politics he was anti-Proprietary, so his greatest achievements occurred when Maryland was directly under the Crown, and no planter had any greater honours.
It seems that my 9th great grandfather and my wife's Calvert ancestors were political opponents. Indeed, after the Calverts were deprived of the proprietorship of Maryland, Hammond served in what was by then called the Royal Assembly between 1692 and 1700. It would be interesting to know what went through Hammond's mind throughout all the changes he navigated during his life. He appears to have been a man of some degree of inconsistency: a one-time pacifist who ascended to the highest military rank, and a religious dissenter who eventually adhered to the established Church of England.
During our recent sojourn in Annapolis, I visited Hammond's impressive monument in the St. Anne's Parish churchyard, shown above right. Because the inscription has eroded over the generations, it is difficult to read. But I found it online in several places:
Here lieth the body of Major General John Hammond who departed this life the twenty-fourth day of November 1707 in the sixty-fourth year of his age.
Here is the lineage from Hammond to my great grandmother, Lucy Jane Bentley Hyder:
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