Editing Dashiell Hammett (section)

==Early life==
Hammett was born near [[Great Mills, Maryland|Great Mills]] on the "Hopewell and Aim" farm in [[Saint Mary's County, Maryland]],<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://www.somd.lib.md.us/tobacco_to_tomcats |title=Tobacco to Tomcats: St. Mary's County since the Revolution |first=Sandy |last=Shoemaker |page=160 |publisher=StreamLine Enterprises, Leonardtown, Maryland |access-date=2008-01-01 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081210071707/http://www.somd.lib.md.us/tobacco_to_tomcats/ |archive-date=2008-12-10 |url-status=dead}}</ref> to Richard Thomas Hammett and his wife Anne Bond Dashiell. His mother belonged to an old Maryland family, whose name in French was de Chiel. He had an elder sister, Aronia, and a younger brother, Richard Jr.<ref>1910 United States Federal Census</ref> Known as Sam, Hammett was baptized a [[Catholic Church|Catholic]]<ref>Hammett, Dashiell and Vince Emery. ''Lost Stories''. San Francisco: Vince Emery Productions, 2005, p. 197.{{ISBN|978-0972589819}}</ref> and grew up in [[Philadelphia]] and [[Baltimore]]. Hammett's family moved to Baltimore when he was four years old in 1898, and for the most part, it was the city where he lived until he left permanently in 1920 when he was 26 years old.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |title=A ten-mile run through Dashiell Hammett's early Baltimore haunts |url=http://blog.loa.org/2011/01/ten-mile-run-through-dashiell-hammetts.html |access-date=2022-11-30}}</ref>  As a teen, Hammett attended the [[Baltimore Polytechnic Institute]], but his formal education ended during his first year of high school; he dropped out in 1908, when he was thirteen years old, due to his father's declining health and the need for him to earn money to support the family.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Dashiell Hammett |url=https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1962 |access-date=2022-11-30 |website=www.litencyc.com |language=en}}</ref>

Hammett then held several jobs before working for the [[Pinkerton (detective agency)|Pinkerton National Detective Agency]]. He served as an operative for Pinkerton from 1915 to February 1922, with time off to serve in [[World War I]]. While working for Pinkerton in Baltimore, he learned the trade and worked in the Continental Trust Building (now [[One Calvert Plaza]]).<ref>{{Cite web |last=Dennies |first=Nathan |title=Dashiell Hammett and the Continental Trust Company Building |url=https://explore.baltimoreheritage.org/items/show/227 |access-date=2022-11-30 |website=Explore Baltimore Heritage |language=en}}</ref> He said that while with the Pinkertons he was sent to [[Butte, Montana]], during miners' union strikes, though some researchers doubt this really happened.<ref>Ward, Nathan. ''The Lost Detective'', Bloomsbury US, 2015.</ref> The agency's role in [[Strikebreaker|strike-breaking]] eventually left him disillusioned.<ref>Heise, Thomas, [http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/modern_fiction_studies/v051/51.3heise.pdf "'Going Blood-Simple Like the Natives': Contagious Urban Spaces and Modern Power in Dashiell Hammett's ''Red Harvest''" (paid access only)], ''Modern Fiction Studies'' 51, no. 3 (Fall 2005), p. 506. The [[Project MUSE]] access provides a no-charge excerpt, but the excerpt does not cover the cited information.</ref>

Hammett enlisted in 1918 and served in the [[United States Army Ambulance Service]]. He was afflicted during that time with the [[Spanish flu]] and later contracted [[tuberculosis]]. He spent most of his time in the Army as a patient at Cushman Hospital in [[Tacoma, Washington]], where he met a nurse, Josephine Dolan, whom he married on July 7, 1921, in San Francisco.<ref>"California, San Francisco County Records, 1824–1997," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-95D7-WQ6?cc=1402856&wc=319K-BZ7%3A20726701%2C22490901 : 20 May 2014), Marriages > image 84 of 233; San Francisco Public Library.</ref>