John Hays Hammond
John Hays Hammond | |
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John Hays Hammond, Jr. (April 13, 1888–February 12, 1965) Natalie Hays Hammond (1904–1985) Nathaniel Harris Hammond (?–1906) Richard Pindle Hammond Harris Hays Hammond (November 27, 1881–August 9,1969) | |
Parent(s) | Sarah (Hays) Lea Richard Pindell Hammond |
John Hays Hammond (March 31, 1855 – June 8, 1936) was an American
Early life
Hammond was the son of Major
Mining career
Hammond took his first mining job as a special expert for the
From 1884-1893, Hammond worked in San Francisco as a consulting engineer for Union Iron Works, Central Pacific Railway and Southern Pacific Railway. In 1893, Hammond left for South Africa to investigate the gold mines in Transvaal for the Barnato Brothers. In 1894, he joined the
Reform Committee of Transvaal
When Hammond arrived in the Transvaal, the political situation was tense. The gold rush had brought in a considerable foreign population of workers, chiefly British and American, whom the Boers referred to as "Uitlanders" (foreigners). These immigrants, manipulated by Rhodes, formed a
The Reform Committee case was heard in April. Hammond,
Return to United States
About 1900, the now-famous Hammond moved to the U.S. and reported on mining properties in the U.S. and Mexico. He reported on the value of the Camp Bird Mine in Colorado, pursuant to its sale in 1902. His report on Winfield Scott Stratton's Independence mine, also in Colorado, and then being floated on the London market, revealed that the ore reserves had been greatly overvalued, and burst the stock bubble. He became a professor of mining engineering at Yale University 1902-1909, and from 1903–1907, he was employed by Daniel Guggenheim as a highly paid general manager and consulting engineer for the Guggenheim Exploration Company (Guggenex).
Hammond's five-year contract included a $250,000 base salary and "an interest from each property that he brought in to Guggenex." He earned $1.2 million in the first year alone. He employed Pope Yeatman, his eventual successor at Guggenex, and Alfred Chester Beatty.[2]
Politics
In 1907, Hammond became the first president of the
Hammond became chairman of the U.S. Coal Commission, 1922-1923. His close friendship and longtime business associations with Frederick Russell Burnham, the highly decorated Scout who he knew from Africa, led Hammond to become a wealthy oil man when Burnham Exploration Company struck oil at Dominguez Oil Field, near Carson, California, in 1923.
May 1926: A Celebration of Hammond
In May 1926, an organization called "The Company of Friends of John Hays Hammond" sponsored eleven dinners around the world (
He died of coronary occlusion on June 8, 1936, in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Family
He married Natalie Harris (1859 – 1931), of Harrisville, Mississippi (40 miles SSW south of the state capital, Jackson) on January 1, 1881, in Hancock, Maryland. Together they had four sons and one daughter:
Harris Hays Hammond (1881 - 1969), a financier, became president of Dominguez Oil Fields Company, which earned him $2 million in 1936, and president of Laughlin Filter Corporation, a small New Jersey company which manufactures centrifuges. In 1928, he and
Natalie Hays Hammond (1904 – 1985) was born in Lakewood, New Jersey. Her estate in North Salem, New York was converted into the Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden in 1957.[8]
Nathaniel Harris Hammond (1902 - 1907) and Richard Pindle Hammond (1896 – 1980), composer, were the two other children.
John Hays Hammond died in 1936 at the age of 81 in an easy chair in his showplace at Gloucester, Massachusetts. He left an estate estimated at $2.5 million, mostly to his four surviving children: inventor John Hays Hammond Jr.; artist Natalie Hays Hammond; composer Richard Pindle Hammond; and financier Harris Hays Hammond.[6]
Awards
The Franklin Institute awarded John Hays Hammond Jr. the Elliott Cresson Medal for life achievement in 1959. He has been called the ‘Father of Radio Control’.[citation needed]
Bibliography
Books
- The milling of gold ores in California (1887)
- A woman's part in a revolution (1897)
- The truth about the Jameson raid (1918)
- Great American Issues: Political Social Economic (1921)
- The engineer (Vocational series) (1922)
- The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond, volumes 1 and 2, (1935)
Other works
- South African Memories: Rhodes - Barnato - Burnham, published in Scribner's Magazine, vol. LXIX, January - June 1921
- Forward to, Scouting on Two Continents, by Major Frederick Russell Burnham, D.S.O., LC call number: DT775 .B8 1926. (1926)
See also
- List of people on the cover of Time Magazine: 1920s- 10 May 1926
References
- ^ ISSN 0040-781X.
- ^ Charles Caldwell Hawley (2014). A Kennecott Story. The University of Utah Press. pp. 27–28.
- New York Times. 19 January 1907.
- New York Times. 4 March 1928.
- ^ a b c d Benjamin B Hampton (1 April 1910). "The Vast Riches of Alaska". Hampton's Magazine. 24 (1).
- ^ ISSN 0040-781X.
- ^ "Hammond Castle & Museum". Retrieved 2 December 2006.
- ^ "Hammond Museum & Japanese Stroll Garden". Retrieved 2 December 2006.
Further reading
- Onselen, Charles van. The Cowboy Capitalist: John Hays Hammond, the American West, and the Jameson Raid (University of Virginia Press, 2018),
- Rotberg, Robert I. "The Jameson Raid: An American Imperial Plot?" Journal of Interdisciplinary History (2019) 49#4 pp 641–648.
- Frederick Russell Burnham Taking Chances, (1944) chapter XXXIV devoted to Hammond. LC call number: DT29 .B8. (1944)
- Spence, Clark C. Mining engineers & the American West; the lace-boot brigade, 1849-1933, . New Haven, Yale University Press, 1970. Yale Western Americana series 22. ISBN 0-300-01224-1(1970)
- John Hays Hammond, Sr. Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.