Hammond was born on April 4, 1833, in Grafton, Massachusetts,[1] to Josiah and Anna Warren.

[4] After finishing school, Hammond began working at Howe & Leeds Wholesale West India Goods Store on Boston's Long Wharf.

The same year, he became a clerk with J. W. Blodgett & Co. Hammond attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a special student on the chemistry of paper manufacturing.

In 1909, the year following Hammond's death, it was the largest such mill in the world, employing 275 people.

[1][5] Hammond also worked at the S. D. Warren mill until 1876, before transferring full-time to Yarmouth as the manager of the new business.

[4] Hammond married Ellen Sarah Sophia Clarke (1833–1905), the sister-in-law of Samuel Warren, in 1874.

[10] Hammond donated Forest Paper Company land for the 1903 construction of Merrill Memorial Library, on Main Street,[1] which was designed by Alexander Longfellow, a nephew of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

[4] A member of the American Horticultural Society, he was a keen arborist, and his knowledge of trees and plants earned him a place on the Overseers' Committee at Harvard University's Gray Herbarium between 1888 and the time of his death.