George Hammond was an American businessman. He was pioneer in the use of refrigerator cars.
Background
George Hammond was born on May 5, 1838, in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, United States, the third of the twelve children of John and Sarah (Huston) Hammond, and the eighth in descent from William Hammond, whose widow Elizabeth, a sister of Admiral Sir William Penn, emigrated from London to New England with her children in 1634. His father was a carpenter and joiner.
Education
George attended a commercial school in Detroit.
Career
As a boy Hammond did chores for a maker of leather pocket-books in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, and took over the business, which employed a dozen girls, before he was twelve years old. His goods going out of fashion, he hired himself to a butcher and later worked in a mattress and palm-leaf hat shop. He soon bought the concern from his employer but sold it six months later in order to try his fortune in the West. Arriving in Detroit in 1854, he worked for two years and a half in a mattress and furniture factory and then started to make chairs on his own account. Several months later his plant burned, leaving him with thirteen dollars in cash and a fifty-dollar note. With this much capital he opened a meat market, added a slaughter house to his retail business, and was soon thriving.
Hammond was the first packer to see the possibilities of refrigerator cars, and his successful use of them. The car with which he began his experiments was built by William Davis, a fish dealer, who had been shipping fish in good condition from Lake Superior to Detroit in his patent ice-box. Just when Hammond dispatched his first carload of dressed beef to the Boston market is not known; the earliest dates given are October 1868 and May 1869. By 1870, however, the practice had proved remunerative and more cars were building; in 1885 Hammond had 800 in operation. The companies of which he was the head and directing genius established large slaughter houses at Omaha and at Hammond, Indiana. As his fortune grew Hammond became heavily interested in Detroit real estate, banking, and insurance. He died in Detroit in his forty-ninth year, of a heart ailment, after an illness of two weeks.
Achievements
Personality
In manner Hammond was quiet and placid, with little to indicate his shrewdness and enterprise. He was a home-loving man and, having worked strenuously from his early years, had few recreations and no interest in religion, politics, literature, or society.
Interests
Hammond did take pleasure in travel, visiting Florida, California, and Europe; and in Detroit he was somewhat famous for his knack in telling tall stories.
Connections
In 1857, Hammond married Ellen Barry of Detroit, by whom he had eleven children.