Thomas Lyon Hamer
Thomas Lyon Hamer was born in July of 1800 in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. In 1817 the Hamer family moved to the new state of Ohio. They purchased land near Oxford in Butler County. Thomas, no longer wanting to take resources from his struggling family, left the family at Nine-Mile Creek, Clermont County.
He was 17 years old with no career skills except a fair public school education, and six cents in the pocket of the clothes he wore on his back. A stranger in a strange land without friends or acquaintances, he began his new career.
He was hired as a teacher of a one-room school. He earned $2 per student for the school term of sixteen weeks. He borrowed an old worm-eaten law book from a local magistrate and read it cover to cover in his spare time. He took a room in the house of the highly respected attorney, Thomas Morris, in Bethel. In the spring of 1821 Thomas Hamer was admitted to the bar.
The young Hamer moved on, starting a law office in the village of Georgetown in the fall of 1821. His practice was slow at first, but Hamer did not waste his spare time. He read extensively, he accepted the office of Justice of the Peace for Pleasant Township, and became the editor of the Benefactor, the local newspaper.
Hamer was barely five feet tall with fiery red hair that he wore in a ‘Lion’s Mane’ style like his hero, Andrew Jackson. He was intelligent and talented, his manners were attractive, his conversation fascinating, and his personality magnetic.
His writing in the newspapers gave him his first taste of political life and he liked it. In 1824 his newspaper endorsed Andrew Jackson for President, and Hamer was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives.
Thomas’ practice in Georgetown had become very lucrative. Thomas found his true place on the floor of the Ohio House. His speeches were electric. By 1829 Thomas was Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives.
In 1832 Thomas was elected to Congress, beating his old friend, Thomas Morris. Morris would be elected to the Senate two months later and become one of the most respected proponents of abolition in the U.S. Senate and the nation.
In 1839 Bart Bailey, the son of Dr. George Bailey, a neighbor and friend of Ulysses Grant, failed at West Point and an appointment to the Academy opened. The young Grant heard of his friend Bart’s failure while at the Bailey house borrowing a quart of milk. When Ulysses went home, he told his mother the news which she, in turn, related to her husband. Jesse Grant was a practical and frugal man. He saw a way to have his son receive a quality education and a career for free.
To get this education Ulysses had to receive the appointment from Representative Hamer but there was a problem. Jesse Grant and Thomas Hamer had been friends even though their politics were exactly opposite. But in a public debate at the ‘Lycem’, a local debating club, the two had taken the opposite opinions as usual, but this time the debate had become very heated, nearly to blows and the two were no longer speaking. Jesse spoke to friend and Senator Morris about the appointment and Morris in turn asked Hamer.
Hamer knew the Grant boy was smart and hard-working, so he agreed to appoint him to the ‘Point’ on his last day in office, but he was unsure of the boy’s legal name. He made the appointment in the name “Ulysses Simpson Grant” instead of what it should have been, “Hiram Ulysses Grant”. Young Ulysses preferred the new name to his given name and used it ever after.
Hamer would serve in Congress until 1838 when he would return to private life. His wife had died, and he had a young daughter. He returned to his practice and continued to write articles for the local papers. President Polk offered him the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1845 but Hamer refused it, not wanting to return to public life at that time.
The following year, 1846, Thomas decided he was ready to go back to Congress. He began to make speeches throughout Brown, Adams, and Highland Counties. Almost simultaneously the Mexican War broke out and Hamer was told by his political backers that if he would raise a Regiment, go to Mexico, and become a hero that they would make him President.
To the ambitious Thomas Hamer this was a new goal. He combined his re-election speeches with recruitment speeches, and within a few months a new Regiment, the 1st Ohio Regiment of Volunteers, was in training. Hamer volunteered as a private and rose quickly through the ranks, and soon he was commissioned Brigadier General.
In October of 1846 Hamer was elected to Congress again but he would never take that seat. The Ohio volunteers moved to Mexico. Hamer was now in command of a Brigade containing the 1st Ohio and the 1st Kentucky just outside Monterey, Mexico.
Hamer had no military experience at all. Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant took Hamer under his wing and taught Hamer the finer points of tactics and how to be an effective officer. Hamer learned his lessons well. Hamer became a confident and capable commander.
In October of 1846 the American army was placed on three sides of the fortified city of Monterey. The two main forces were made up of regulars
and commanded by West Pointers. These forces were poised to attach the main gates to the city. Hamer’s brigade of volunteers was to stay with the artillery. If they were to be used at all it was to be as a demonstration to draw defenders away from the assaults at the gates by the regulars.
General Scott’s regulars could make no inroads at either gate, so he called on Hamer for a demonstration. Hamer led his troops forward. They met tremendous cannon and musket fire. Most of the volunteers had never been in battle but they continued to move forward through the hail of fire. Soon it looked like it was safer to go over the walls than it was to go back to the artillery, so over the wall they went. Hamer’s volunteers turned the tide of the Battle of Monterey and Hamer was a national hero.
Thomas Hamer was close to realizing his dream of becoming President. He was poised to make his great political move, but he fell ill on November 30th. During the night of December 2, 1846, he died of what was probably Yellow Fever. Hamer was buried with full military honors in Mexico.
When the news of his death reached Brown County the residents and his wife petitioned the government to return Hamer’s body to his home. The government was easily convinced, and Hamer was exhumed. Since the medical profession could not at that time explain Hamer’s death or whether the disease was contagious, an unusual precaution was taken. They decided to send him home sealed in a casket filled with alcohol.
When the funeral party reached Higginsport by steamboat on February 17, 1847, ten thousand people met the boat.
He had been the Congressman for Clermont, Brown, and Highland Counties and people from those counties and others came to be part of the “Hero of Monterey’s” funeral. All of the local militia units took part in the procession.
A Masonic ceremony was performed at the grave side in the ‘Old Baptist Cemetery’ beside the main gate to the Brown County Fairgrounds. General Thomas L. Hamer was laid to rest with tremendous pomp and circumstance. The crowd did not disperse until late into the night.
On Saturday October 29, 2022, he was to be inducted into the Brown County Hall of Fame. The Brown County Historical Society event was at the Georgetown United Methodist Church Fellowship Hall at 6 p.m.
