Letter from Henry C. Hammond to Ellen, March 9, 1932 (page 1)
Book 1, Page 9 ·1814–1932
Transcription
A typewritten letter, page 1 of multiple, on the letterhead of Hammond & Kennedy (Lawyers — 1403 Southern Finance Building, Augusta, Georgia). The three names listed at upper left are Henry C. Hammond, F. Frederick Kennedy, and John F. Hardin.
March 9, 1932
My dear Ellen:
Julia was thoughtful enough to send me your very charming letter to her of a few days ago. Delighted as always to hear from you.
There is something deeply significant to my mind in the trustees increasing your salary at this time. I would like to dilate upon it.
Your reference to family history touched me deeply. Oh, what a record I could have made — black on white or even on my young gray matter. Grandmother Hammond and I were devoted and she communicated to me a great deal of family history which I deplore has grown dim and uncertain with the years. Our common ancestor Christopher Fitzsimmons came to Charleston, I think when only nineteen. Grandmother, as you know was his sixteenth child, born in 1814, and he died when
she was eleven years of age.Little incidents that stick in my memory are that he was never sick in bed except at the time of his last illness at Kathwood, where he died perhaps of malaria fever, except when a dog bit the horse on the leg that he was driving from Charleston to Columbia, and he was thrown from a sulky and sprained an ankle. He was going to attend a session of the Legislature.
AI Notes
Page 1 of a multi-page typewritten letter from Henry C. Hammond to Ellen, dated March 9, 1932, on Hammond & Kennedy letterhead from Augusta, Georgia. Hammond replies to a letter Ellen wrote to Julia, reflects on family history, and begins recounting what his grandmother told him about Christopher FitzSimons (the emigrant): his arrival at Charleston around age nineteen, his being his grandmother’s father’s sixteenth child (born 1814), and his death at Kathwood. The letter continues onto the next scan. The in-typescript strike-through of ‘she was eleven years of age’ shows Hammond aborting the sentence rather than finishing it. The letterhead is HAMMOND & KENNEDY in 1932; by 1940 (p006) it had become HAMMOND, KENNEDY & YOW, the third partner having changed from John F. Hardin to D. Field Yow. ‘Julia’ is most likely Julia White FitzSimons (Mrs. Peter Gaillard FitzSimons), Hammond’s cousin via the p003 family tree.
Letter continues on the next scan.
Henry C. Hammond, the writer, is the grandson of Gov. James H. Hammond and Catherine FitzSimons Hammond — making him the compiler Amy’s second cousin once removed. This 1932 letter to Aunt Ellen FitzSimons (then directress of the Charleston Library Society at 164 King Street) predates by eight years the 1940 letter to Amy on pages 006–008. “Grandmother Hammond” — the source of nearly every anecdote in the letter — is Catherine FitzSimons Hammond (b. 1814 as the youngest of the emigrant’s children, d. between 1875 and 1896 by the dates Hammond gives).