Charles Hammond, long an honored member of the county bar, was born in Maryland, and came to Belmont county in 1801 and was appointed prosecuting attorney for the Northwest Territory. During the war of 1812 he published the Federalist at St. Clairsville. In 1824 he removed to Cincinnati and attained a high position as editor of the Cincinnati Gazette. He was the author of the political essays signed "Hampden," published in the National Intelligencer in 1820, upon the Federal Constitution, which were highly complimented by Jefferson. He died in Cincinnati, in 1840, where he was regarded as the ablest man that had wielded the editorial pen known to the history of Ohio.

"I know of no writer," writes Mansfield, "who could express an idea so clearly and so briefly. He wrote the pure old English—the vernacular tongue, unmixed with French or Latin phrases or idioms, and unperverted with any scholastic logic. His language was like himself—plain, sensible and unaffected. His force, however, lay not so much in this as in his truth, honesty and courage, those moral qualities which made him distinguished at that day and would distinguish him now. His opposition to slavery and its influence on the government was firm, consistent and powerful. Probably no public writer did more than he to form a just and reasonable anti-slavery sentiment. In fine, as a writer of great ability, and a man of large acquirements and singular integrity, Hanimond was scarcely equalled by any man of his time.