Illiterate “as there were no schools, roads and few buildings when he was born.” Methodist, but “left … on the slavery question and joined the Society of Friends.” Marriage to non-Quaker Catherine Trogdon, condemned by Cane Creek Monthly Meeting (Quakers); AH confessed error, reinstated. Occupation: farmer, manufacturer of crockery. Owned 608-acre plantation at Gabriel’s Creek near Asheboro, N.C. “Sold his large plantation two miles east of Asheboro to his son-in-law John Trogdon, and bought a smaller farm on Squirrel Creek where he erected a mill, also a shop and lathe room and a pottery to make ware. He was a minister in church as long as able to travel. He lived a consistent life until about 80 years old when full of years as the ripened corn falls, so his spirit took its flight and we laid his body in the cemetery at Holly Spring near his father' s grave.” Rev. William Clarkson Hammer: “My grandfather and (grand)mother both lived strictly religious and conscientious lives yet from my earliest recollections they both smoked their long stemmed pipes, a thing they would not have done had they considered it sinful.” (John Hammer, Ancestors and Descendants 1630-2000; Hammer & Spoon Families, A Genealogy, Hammer, 1907) Sketch of son-in-law Jacob Swafford (K9/12-13:[2]) states that “the Hammer family were originally from Tennessee, but moved to North Carolina.” (1902 Biographical Memoirs of Henry County, Ind.) Given paper trail of Hammers in North Carolina, it seems most probable that they moved from North Carolina to Tennessee, then back again.
Upon the death of Hammer's father-in-law Samuel Trogdon, his wife fell heir to two Negro slaves. Grandfather and grandmother were sure that it was sinful to have human beings in slavery. The state having it unlawful to free them and turn them loose here among us, that the y sent ‘Ede’ to Indiana, a free state. I remember to have heard my grandmother read letters that she received from ‘Ede.’” (Hammer & Spoon Families, A Genealogy, Hammer, 1907)