Ogden H. Hammond

Ogden Haggerty Hammond (October 13, 1869 – October 29, 1956) was an American businessman, politician and diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to Spain from 1925 to 1929. He was the father of Millicent Fenwick, a four-term Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from New Jersey.

Early life Hammond was born in 1869 in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of John Henry Hammond and Sophia Vernon Wolfe. During the Civil War his father served as chief of staff to General William Tecumseh Sherman before becoming a general himself. His brother, John Henry Hammond Jr., married Emily Vanderbilt Sloane, granddaughter of William Henry Vanderbilt, and was the father of John H. Hammond II (1910–1987).

The Hammond family moved to Chicago, Illinois when he was four, and then to Saint Paul, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Yale University in 1893.

Hammond worked as an insurance broker, then moved into real estate, becoming president of the Broadway Improvement Company and the Hoboken Terminal Railway Company, as well as vice-president of the Hoboken Land and Improvement Company, owned by his in-laws, the Stevenses.

Diplomatic career and later years

In 1925, Calvin Coolidge appointed Hammond to be United States Ambassador to Spain. He served until 1929, when Herbert Hoover appointed the new ambassador, Irwin B. Laughlin. The Spanish Royal Court awarded him the Order of Isabella the Catholic for his public service. The Hammonds settled in a forty-seven-room mansion in Bernardsville in 1908. Millicent Vernon Hammond (1910–1992), who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and married Hugh McLeod Fenwick (1905–1991) in 1931. Ogden H. Hammond Jr. (1912–1976), who married Marsyl Stokes.

On December 18, 1917, Hammond remarried, to Marguerite "Daisy" (née McClure) Howland (1876–1969), the daughter of New York attorney David McClure and the widow of Dulany Howland. Her son, McClure "Mac" Meredith Howland (1906–1985), became Hammond's stepson.

Hammond died in 1956 at his home in Manhattan at the age of 87.

Through his son Ogden, he was the grandfather of Edythe (née Hammond) Lurie and Madeline (née Hammond) Ilah Alatas of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Dr. Ogden H. Hammond Jr., a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.