The Ed Hammond collection consists of Bibles, financial ledgers, journals and ephemera from 1752-1971. The collection offers insight into the genealogies of the Franklin, Warrington, Selby, Martin, Townsend and Upshur families of Maryland. Records also include religious texts, financial ledgers from 1830-1971; and journals and ephemera from 1878-1909. The collection was discovered in the attic of a home in Worcester County, Maryland, and donated to the Center by Ed Hammond.

Edward Hopkins Hammond, Jr was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1942 to Edward Hammond Sr. and Grace Hammond of Berlin, Maryland. Educated at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Delaware, he attended the University of Georgia. He transferred to the University of Maryland School of Law and graduated in 1966. He served in the U.S. Army for two years as a company commander at Brooke General Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. He worked as an attorney for the firm of Marcus J. Williams and Joanne B. Johnson and as part-time Worcester County Attorney. He retired from the firm in 2002 to become full-time Worcester County Attorney. He served on the Governor’s Commission to Revise the Annotated Code of Maryland, as Chairman of the Berlin Board of Zoning Appeals, and Chairman of the Berlin Planning Commission. He was a trustee of St. Andrew’s School, the Salisbury School, and a founding trustee of the Berlin Heritage Foundation. He was responsible for the restoration of a number of historic buildings in Berlin, Maryland, including the Calvin B. Taylor House, the Odd Fellows Building, the Ayres Building, the Conway Building, the Eagle Hotel and the Atlantic Hotel. Hammond died on September 1, 2011.

The collection documents the Franklin, Warrington, Selby, Martin, Townsend and Upshur families of Maryland from 1752-1971, with the bulk of the collection from 1812-1909. It includes a 1752 edition of Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ by William Burkitt, an evangelical minister. The Burkitt text contains genealogical notations from the Franklin family to 1846; a sketch of the pulpit and pews of Buckingham Presbyterian Church, circa 1784; a note for a debt from 1834; and compositions on Moses and Balaam from 1861. The collection also includes a photograph of Representative John Rankin Franklin, who served in Congress as a Whig from 1853-1855.

The collection is arranged by subject: religious texts; financial ledgers; journals; and ephemera. Folders are listed by their location in the box; any given subject may be dispersed throughout the entirety of the collection.