The Samuel Hammond memorial on Greene Street feels like one of those Augusta markers that rewards a…read moreslow walk and a moment of attention. It's a rough‑hewn granite stele topped with a bronze bust of Colonel Hammond in his Revolutionary War uniform, his hair tied back in that unmistakably eighteenth‑century style. The plaque beneath it compresses a remarkably wide life: minuteman captain, cavalry officer under Washington, veteran of battles from Cowpens to Augusta, congressman, territorial governor, and a public servant whose career stretched across six decades.
The inscription reads, "Born in Richmond County, Virginia, Sept. 1757, Died at Varello, near Augusta, Sept. 1842. Patriot, Soldier, Statesman.
"Captain of minutemen at Great Kanahwa, 1774. * Long Bridge, Norfolk, 1775. * Aid to General Hand at Pittsburgh, 1778. * Colonel of cavalry under Washington, 1779.
"With General Greene in every important engagement through Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. On the front line at Eutaw, Cowpens and Kings Mountain. At the siege of Charleston, Savannah and Augusta. Member of Congress from Georgia, 1802. Appointed by President Jefferson in 1805 to the command of upper Louisiana. First territorial governor of Missouri. Secretary of State in South Carolina, 1831.
"He gave 60 years of public service to the cause of America.
"This memorial in his honor, placed by the Augusta Chapter Daughters of American Revolution, as the final tribute of his grandson, Hugh Vernon Washington.
The monument was erected in 1913 by the Augusta Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR).
The name "Varello" doesn't survive today as a mapped community, which is why it doesn't show up in modern searches. Most historians place Varello on the South Carolina side of the river, in the Beech Island area, because Hammond's documented death location in other sources is Beech Island, South Carolina. That lines up with the old plantation belt just across the river from Augusta, where many prominent Augusta‑area families kept estates.
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