Augusta History Reader

Judge Hammond knew how to have fun and excelled as a swimmer. In 1894, a local gentleman offered $50 to anyone who could swim across the Savannah River five times without resting. Judge Hammond, a twenty-five-year-old lawyer at the time, accepted the wager. With a swarm of onlookers crowding the banks of the river, he completed the swim in little over an hour. On another occasion, towards the end of a swim meet at Lake Olmstead, Judge Hammond, wearing all his clothes, sprang from the diving platform to perform a backward somersault into the water. He was followed by Judge Joseph Ganahl (1866-1928), who also jumped into the water fully clothed. The two then swam the allotted course with Judge Hammond eventually winning the impromptu race. It appears that the two judges had engaged each other in a “daring” contest and neither gentleman wanted to be called a “feather-log.” One time, a mortuary published a notice in the local paper looking for relatives or friends of a young bride they had discovered with no name. No one came forth, until Judge Hammond, cloaked in southern gentility, stepped forward and claimed the body. He gave her the name of Geraldine and provided her a fitting funeral, then he had her buried in his family cemetery in Beech Island, South Carolina. Judge Hammond was a “distinguished Southern jurist, a bachelor and, above all, a gentleman of the South.”