William Gardiner Hammond, Jr. was born May 3, 1829 in Newport, Rhode Island, the son of William Gardiner Hammond, Sr. – a lawyer and land surveyor – and Sarah Tillinghast Bull Hammond. After attending Wickford School in Rhode Island, young William was prepared for college by a Congregational minister – proving himself especially proficient in the Classics, and becoming fluent in Latin, Greek, and French. At age seventeen (1846), he entered classes at Amherst College, where he graduated in 1849 as salutatorian of his class.
Settling on law as a career, Hammond prepared for the bar in the law office of Samuel E. Johnson in Brooklyn, New York, was admitted to the bar in 1851, and became a senior partner in Johnson’s firm where he practiced law until 1856. Due to poor health, William decided to travel to Europe, where he studied civil law and legal history at Heidelberg University in Berlin, while also becoming proficient in German. When the Financial Panic hit in 1857. Wm.G. lost most of his money, so he returned to the United States in 1858, resuming his practice – this time in Manhattan rather than Brooklyn.
As we discuss elsewhere, throughout the 1850’s, many Easterners found their way westward, settling in the new state of Iowa. According to family records, Wm.G.’s younger brother – George T. Hammond – a civil engineer – had come to Iowa in the late 1850’s, eventually settling in Anamosa in Jones County. While it’s not clear exactly when William joined his brother, it appears that he took a job as professor of languages at Bowen Collegiate Institute – later known as Lenox College – in nearby Hopkinton (see map above right) in Delaware County – just north of Jones County – around 1859. As we’ll come to discover later, Wm.G. found – in Hopkinton – more than just a teaching gig!
So now, we come to a curious twist in the story of William G. Hammond – SUI’s first Law School Chancellor!
In writing this article, I found that most biographers give very little space to this next part of William G. Hammond’s life – where he and his brother spend one year (1860) working together for the railroad. Actually, only one author – Dorsey D. Ellis, Jr. – gives us much detail – and here it is…
In 1860, (Hammond) traveled to Iowa at the request of his brother, a railroad civil engineer (where) he took employment as a chainman for one dollar a day on a construction project in Anamosa, Iowa.
Say what?
Well, I just couldn’t let this intriguing part of Hammond’s story go with only one sentence. So here goes…
First of all, this one sentence explains a lot about the ‘why and when’ surrounding George T. Hammond‘s move to Iowa. Beginning in the 1850’s, the westward expansion of America was heating up, and to put it in modern-day terms, the railroad industry was to 19th-century America what the space race to the moon was in the 1960’s. In the mid-1850’s, there were, at minimum, four different railroads spending big bucks to build a transcontinental railroad – with Iowa being right at the center of all that competition. Read more here. With the first tracks being completed between Davenport, Muscatine and Iowa City in 1856, a young civil engineer – like George Hammond – would certainly become a hot commodity in Iowa as railroad barons looked to push their lines further west.
Our second clue here is the reference to Anamosa, Iowa. You see, by looking at the map below while combining that data with the history of Iowa railroads – you’ll know that – on March 9, 1860 – the Dubuque Western Railroad finally arrived in Anamosa in Jones County and had a business plan for 1860 to go further west into Marion in Linn County. So, if I’m a young civil engineer from Rhode Island, the opportunity to work for an upstart railroad in eastern Iowa that is working its way westward is a no-brainer.
When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, many of the nation’s railroads had to pull back on their westward expansion plans, leaving many laborers, including the 32-year-old, Wm.G. Hammond – who had worked his way up to chief engineer – with little future. That’s why records show that Hammond – at this point – turned back to his passion – opening a law practice – this time in Anamosa. As a community leader, Hammond also used his people skills to recruit a company of militia for the Union army – although, apparently, he and his squad was never assigned to duty in the South like so many others. Read more here. During this season (1861-1863), Wm.G. also served as a court reporter for the Iowa Supreme Court in Des Moines – publishing a digest of the court’s activities and decisions – his first legal publication. These trips to central Iowa put him in close contact with two men who would eventually guide Hammond into the very best of his legal career…
George W. Wright (above left) and Chester C. Cole (above right) both served on the Iowa Supreme Court, and upon their recommendation, Hammond – in 1863 – moved to Des Moines in order to open a law practice in Iowa’s new capital city. Once settled, he married Juliet Martha Roberts – the daughter of a Presbyterian minister from – you guessed it – Hopkinton, Iowa. Married on May 3, 1865, the couple eventually had one daughter – Juliet in 1869.
That same year (1865), Judges Wright & Cole established the Iowa Law School in Des Moines – the first law school west of the Mississippi River, and based on their past work with Hammond, invited Wm.G. to serve as the school’s first teaching professor. Interestingly, since he actually had no prior law school experience, Hammond developed his own method – giving his students lists of cases to read, and then, by cross-examination, stressing the reasoning on which the cases were founded. This approach was revolutionary, and with its success being heralded back East, the following year (1867), Wm.G. also became the editor of a new law journal – The Western Jurist – the only legal periodical published west of the Allegheny Mountains.
With the new law school and Hammond’s unique teaching skills proving to be such a success, in 1868, the Iowa Law School was moved to Iowa City – becoming the Law Department of the State University of Iowa (SUI). In the process, his mentors – Wright and Cole – insisted that Hammond relocate to Iowa City in order to serve as the new school’s Principal—a title that was later changed to Chancellor. Hammond agreed, and that fall (1868) – the new Law School opened – bringing together 25 students, 3 faculty members and 1,100 volumes in the Law Library – all bunched into a handful of second floor rooms in Old Capitol.
Which brings us now to our rare postal cover from Hammond’s office on the campus of SUI…
Under Wm.G. Hammond’s leadership, the SUI Law Department graduated – in 1869 – its first class of 16 students – all men. But in 1870, at the insistence of Hammond and other forward-thinking leaders in Iowa City, the Iowa Legislature changed the state law on licensing lawyers, dropping the requirement of “white male,” thus opening the door for women and other minorities to be accepted for enrollment. Yet back in Iowa City, the change had already begun! In 1869 – the first woman admitted to practice law in the U. S. – Arabella Babb Mansfield – was admitted to the Iowa Bar, after reading law for two years in her brother’s law office in Mt. Pleasant. In 1873, Mary Beth Hickey Wilkinson became the first woman graduate from the SUI School of Law, and in 1879, Alexander Clark, Jr. was the first African-American, with Moung Edwin – from Burma – being the first graduate from another country!
Because of his growing expertise in legal matters, Wm.G., in 1870, also became one of three code commissioners appointed under statute to revise the State of Iowa’s Legal Codes, with Hammond taking charge of the public law and private law sections while preparing the final report for the Iowa Legislature. Another major achievement during this decade came when Wm.G.’s studies in civil law led to his writing of the lengthy introduction to the American Edition of Sandars’s Institutes of Justinian (1875), followed in 1880, when Hammond also published his own edition of Francis Lieber’s Hermeneutics.
In his spare time – during the busy 1870’s – Hammond also chaired the Executive Committee of the SUI Board of Trustees, and for a season – served as Board President of the State Historical Society of Iowa – which had its offices on the SUI campus as well. All in all, during his first decade of leadership with the SUI Law Department (1868-1878), the faculty reported that “the Department – at the close of its first decade – stands fourth in the number of annual graduates, among the forty-three law schools in the country.” Quite an achievement for a small town lawyer from Anamosa, Iowa – don’t you think?
Always eager to improve legal education, Hammond also led the battle in the Iowa State Bar Association to petition the General Assembly to require at least two years of study for admission to the bar. Legislation was introduced in 1880 and finally passed in 1884 – sadly after Hammond had left his position at SUI.
With all this success at SUI, William G. Hammond became one of the most popular names in legal education and was recruited by many universities around the country. Finally, in 1881, he decided to follow the money, moving to St. Louis where he become Dean of a new law school being developed at Washington University – a position he held until his death in 1894. His last major publication was his edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries (1890) and his goal was to make the work useful to “all readers who study the law or any part of it as a science.”
William Gardiner Hammond died on April 13, 1894 – at age 64, and his wife – Juliet Martha Roberts Hammond – passed in 1926 at age 89/90. Both are buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.
Upon Professor Hammond’s death, tributes began to pour in from all over the country. In closing, here are just a few…
In the history of the common law, William G. Hammond was recognized as an authority without a superior in the United States.
William Hammond’s goal as an educator was “elevating the standard of legal education and the general tone mental and moral of the western bar.” He was an inspiring teacher of law, exuded magnetism, and was immensely popular with his students. He loved his vocation, saying, “I always feel better while actively engaged in teaching.”
William Hammond’s life was teaching, scholarship, and books. His great contribution was setting the State University of Iowa Law Department on a firm footing. He combined all the elements of his professional life by leaving his magnificent collection of books on the civil law and the history of the common law to the State University of Iowa Law Department.
As the historian Thomas Barnes observed, William G. Hammond was among the “first generation of academic teachers-scholars in the law who were the creators of the modern American law school.” Others have characterized him as “a man of broad vision whose chief interest lay in legal education,” “an eminent person” in his time, “a magnetic teacher who manifested a keen interest in his students,” the “most eminent authority in America on the history of the common law,” “one of the top ten law teachers in America, ranking with Langdell and Ames (Harvard), Theodore Timothy Dwight (Columbia), Thomas McIntyre Cooley (Michigan), Theodore Salisbury Woolsey (Yale), and two or three others of like stature.”
William Gardiner Hammond clearly merited the high regard in which he was held by his contemporaries and deserves more homage than he receives today. His academic career spanned the three decades following the Civil War when the nation was undergoing profound changes, changes that transformed the legal profession. He responded by initiating fundamental changes in the education of lawyers in order to equip students of his generation to cope with the challenges they would confront.
Did you know that the SUI Law Department was housed on the second floor of Central Hall (Old Capitol) until a new Law Building (today’s Gilmore Hall) opened in 1910? Read the story of Charles Burke Elliott of West Liberty, Iowa – a student in the SUI Law Department in 1879-80.
On November 7, 1925, upon the 60th anniversary of the creation of the Iowa Law School, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported on the huge anniversary party held in Iowa City – honoring the late Chancellor Hammond and Judge George C. Wright – who also served in Iowa City as a law professor after the school moved from Des Moines to Iowa City in 1868. In an the article, the long-time Iowa Daily Press editor – John P. Irish – who played a major role in convincing state legislators to vote for the School of Law to come to Iowa City – wrote these kind words about Wm. G. Hammond…
Today, the University of Iowa College of Law – housed in the Boyd Law Building (pictured above right) – stands as one of the most prestigious law schools in the nation. Thanks – William G. Hammond – for all you did in getting it all started!
November 7, 1925 – Upon the 60th anniversary of the creation of the SUI Law School, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reports on the huge anniversary party held in Iowa City – honoring the late Chancellor Hammond and Judge George C. Wright.
Kudos to the amazing resources below for the many quotes, photographs, etc. used on this page.
Hammond, William Gardiner, The Biographical Dictionary of Iowa, UI Library
Dubuque Western Railroad, Encyclopedia Dubuque
SUI Law Building – 1929 (Gilmore Hall), Iowa City Past
Boyd Law Building, University of Iowa Facilities Management
Law School History and Milestones, University of Iowa School of Law website
Juliet Martha Roberts Hammond, Find-A-Grave
William Gardiner Hammond, Find-A-Grave
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