Hammer, Adam

Born: 1818-12-27 Baden, Germany

Died: 1878-08-04 Baden, Germany

Flourished: 1848 to 1877 Saint Louis, Missouri

Adam Hammer, physician, was educated at the University of Heidelberg, graduating with a medical degree in 1842. He served as an army surgeon for three years before entering private practice in the German city of Mannheim. After participating in the German revolution of 1848, Hammer was forced to relocate to the United States and arrived in St. Louis in October of that year. He resumed the practice of medicine in St. Louis and advocated for improvements to medical education. Hammer was an organizer of the short-lived St. Louis College of Medical and Natural Sciences in 1855, and in 1859 founded the Humboldt-Institut, which was a German-language medical college. He acted as a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention. On the outbreak of the Civil War, Hammer supported the Union, serving as a lieutenant-colonel in the Fourth Missouri Infantry in 1861, and as a brigade surgeon of volunteers from 1862 to 1865. He married Helene Leip in 1846.

James Moores Ball, Dr. Adam Hammer, Surgeon and Apostle of Higher Medical Education (St. Louis, MO: Medical Press, 1909); Germany, Select Marriages, 1558-1929, 1846, Mannheim, Baden (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2014); U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 2, St. Louis, St. Louis County, MO, 212; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 1, St. Louis, St. Louis County, MO, 434; Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions of 1856, 1860, and 1864 (Minneapolis, MN: Charles W. Johnson, 1893), 174; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903), 1:495; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887), 12:289, 350; St. Louis Globe-Democrat (MO), 27 August 1878, 7:1-2.