Career
Born in Walton County, Hammock served in the United States Army during the Mexican-American War, where he served with another future mayor, Captain Allison Nelson. When the American Civil War began, he entered the Confederate States Army as a commissioned officer After the war, he returned to Atlanta and began working as a merchant with the firm Langston, Crane & Hammock and later he worked the real estate trade with a prominent office on Whitehall Street at Five Points.
During his first reconstruction-era term as mayor he inaugurated the city"s waterworks system and his second term was the first two-year term after Atlanta adopted a new city charter.
He served as president of the city water commission from the mid-1880s until his death.