History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/William G. Hammond
WILLIAM G. HAMMOND was born at Newport, Rhode Island, May 3, 1829. He graduated with the degree of A. B. in 1849 from Amherst, read law in Brooklyn and New York for three years and was admitted to the bar in 1851, practicing in those cities until 1856. He then went abroad for two years and returning in 1858, soon went to Iowa, joining an engineering party and working his way to the position of chief engineer in a new railroad enterprise. He was later professor of languages in Bowen Collegiate Institute at Hopkinton for a year. In 1863 he resumed the practice of law at Anamosa and three years later removed to Des Moines, where he became associated with Judges Wright and Cole in the Iowa Law School. In 1868 this institution was removed to Iowa City and became the Law Department of the State University with Mr. Hammond in charge; he became Chancellor in 1870 and the following year was appointed one of the Commissioners to codify the laws of Iowa. He received the degree of LL.D. from Iowa College in 1870 and also from Amherst in 1877. In 1881 Dr. Hammond resigned his position in the State University and became Dean of the St. Louis Law School which he retained until his death, April 12, 1894. In the history of the common law he was recognized as an authority without a superior in the United States. He published a Digest of the Decisions of the Supreme Court of Iowa, an edition of Blackstone's Commentaries and other works. From 1889 he was at the head of the committee on legal education of the American Bar Association. He was for several years president of the State Historical Society.