Bonaventura / Bonaventure Hammer (1842-1917)

Bonaventura Hammer was a German-American clergyman born June 23, 1842, in Dürmersheim, Baden. He came to America at the age of four; his family settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He studied theology and, in 1860, joined the Franciscan order in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1865 he was ordained a Catholic priest.

He was a prolific writer, and known especially for translating Lew Wallace’s Ben Hur into German. His writings also include Die katholische kirche in den Vereinigten Staaten Nord Amerikas [1897], and Die Franciscaner in den Vereinigten Staaten Nordamerica’s. Von der Entdeckung durch Columbus bis auf unsere Zeit [1892].

A younger photograph of Bonaventure Hammer (1842-1917). He has a bald pate, with hair around the ears. He wears a monk's robes with a corded sash. Beneath the photograph is the photographer's name: Powelson, the letters N P A, and Detroit.

City directories place him at St. Boniface Church, Louisville, Kentucky (1866, 1872)
St. Stephen’s Church, Hamilton, Ohio (1874-1875)
St. Mary’s Church, Detroit, Michigan (1877)
Cincinnati, Ohio (1880, 1882)
St. Boniface German Catholic Church, Lafayette, Indiana (1882, 1887-1888, 1894)
St. Joseph’s Sanitarium, San Diego, California (1903-1904)
St. Boniface German Catholic Church, Lafayette, Indiana (1903, 1907, 1911, 1913)

He died Jan. 19, 1917, and is buried in Saint Boniface Cemetery, Lafayette, Indiana. He was survived by two twin brothers, Anthony Hammer of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Leopold Hammer of Oil City, Pennsylvania.

Obituary, Lafayette Courier, Jan. 20, 1917