BIOGRAPHY: Charles B. HAMM, Cambria County, PA 

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From Wiley, Samuel T., ed. Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Cambria 
County, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Union Publishing Co., 1896, p. 306-8
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CHARLES B. HAMM, proprietor of the Merchants' Hotel, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is 
one of the best-known and most successful hotel men in western Pennsylvania, and 
is always alive to the best interests of his city. His first success was 
achieved when he was little more than twenty-four years of age.
     Mr. Hamm made an excellent beginning in life by being born on January 1, 
1853. His entrance was made at Clarion, in Clarion county, Pennsylvania. He 
received a good common-school education, and is also a graduate of Dayton 
academy, in Armstrong county. Vigorously striking out on his own account, when 
but little past his majority, he "went West," and for over two years managed the 
Post Traders' store at Fort Saunders, in Wyoming territory, and in that school 
of experience his business instincts were thoroughly aroused, and the hard 
knocks incident to frontier life inured him to the sometimes unpleasant ways of 
the world, at the same time broadening his views. In 1875 he returned to 
Pennsylvania, and in 1877 took a clerkship in the celebrated Du Bois House, at 
Du Bois, in Clearfield county. Six months later he was made manager of the same 
hotel, and remained in that position for two years. Then he went to Pittsburg 
and clerked in various hotels of the best class until 1887, when he opened and 
ran the Albemarle for a year. Then occurred the excellent opening which took him 
to Johnstown in 1888, as proprietor of the old Merchants' Hotel, which he 
purchased from Charles Kropp. An almost unparalleled misfortune was soon to 
overtake him, however, for in the great flood of May 31, 1889, the hotel was 
destroyed and all that he had ventured in the city was swept away. He did not 
lose courage, however, but luckily pulled himself together, and in 1890 went to 
Atlantic City, where, for one season, he operated the Hotel Albion, which 
contained two hundred and twenty-four sleeping-rooms. Johnstown always remained 
in his mind, but the ruined city was slow in rebuilding, so in the autumn of 
1890 he purchased the Zimmerman House at Greensburg, and presided over the 
destinies of that popular resort until 1893, when he sold out to excellent 
advantage and returned to the city from which he had been so rudely driven by 
fate. In the meantime the "New Merchants'" had been built on the site of the 
old, a very much larger and superior hotel in every way, and without doubt the 
finest in western Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburg. Therefore it was that the 
year 1894 saw him re-established at "the old stand," under the most pleasant 
conditions; and there he is today, and for what all his hosts of friends hope 
may be a bright, happy and successful future.
     Mr. Hamm, whose business career has thus been briefly noted, is a son of 
Daniel B. and Susannah D. (Hoffman) Hamm. His remote paternal ancestors were 
German, but his grandfather, and even his great-grandfather, were born in 
America, the Hamms being one of the oldest families in Clarion county, where the 
grandfather, Christian Hamm, was a farmer, and later, a contractor and builder. 
Daniel B. Hamm, the father, was born in Clarion county in 1812. He was well 
educated in the old subscription schools of the period, and, to be more helpful 
to his father in business, he learned the carpenter trade, but later drifted 
into the mercantile and hotel business himself, so that his son was "to the 
manor born." Politically the father was a staunch democrat, and being a man of 
force and influence in the community he was elected to the office of sheriff, 
serving from 1852 to 1855. He died in 1864, after a successful career.
     Philip Hoffman, the maternal grandfather, was of New England stock, but in 
early life removed to Danville, Montour county, Pennsylvania, and settled in 
Clarion county, where he died in 1871. He was a merchant and a local preacher of 
the Methodist denomination.  
     To complete the personnel of Mr. Hamm's family, his wife, who busily and 
gracefully presides with him over the fortunes of the Merchants' Hotel, was Miss 
Mollie M. Cover, youngest daughter of Mr. William Cover, the latter being now, 
at the venerable age of eighty years, among, the oldest members of one of 
Cambria county's first families, honored for his true worth and manliness, and 
loved by all who know him - our friend's best friends, and therefore linked with 
him in this brief and imperfect sketch.