- December 4, 2025
For 45 years now, Hammock Hardware & Supply has been a staple to The Hammock community.
“When we first opened, we were open seven days a week and pumped kerosene by hand,” shop founder Margaret Russell said.
Russell, 83, said she and her husband John Russell opened the shop out of their home on July 8, 1980, on the 16th birthday of their daughter Robyn Russell, now Robyn Jennings. At the time, she said, Flagler County had a population of only a few thousand people, there was no Hammock Dunes toll bridge and Hammock Hardware was the only shop like it in the area.
The store has been located at 5652 N. Ocean Shore Blvd. since the shop building was completed in 1981. Russell said she ran it virtually on her own for the first three years while her husband John, a minority owner of Hammock Hardware, worked to support them.
“And then we started getting busier and busier,” Russell said, “and it just grew and grew and grew.”
Jennings, 61, said her parents knew The Hammock was going to grow.
“They knew the area was getting ready to boom,” she said. “It took a little longer than they expected."
Originally, Russell said, they only sold PVC, fasteners and plumbing supplies. But over the years, the store has expanded its supply as more development moved in, selling a larger variety of plumbing and building supplies, like what was used in nearby construction projects and homes.
“And if somebody comes in and needs something and we don't have it, we'll get it for them,” Russell said.
Jennings said she did not always want to run the hardware store but eventually returned and took over the shop so her mother and father could retire.
It wasn’t always easy as a woman running a hardware store, Jennings and Russell said. There have been times where customers have wanted to speak to a man, they said, assuming a woman wouldn’t have the correct answer. But as time went on, the community came to know the Russell women and trust their advice.
Through it all, Hammock Hardware has become a centerpiece of memories for the Russell family. Jennings said she learned all she knows from her father and mother, and remembers spending her free time after school in the shop.
John Russell died on Aug. 12, 2024, and Jennings said it’s a blessing to have something her parents worked so hard on, but it’s also difficult sometimes being so reminded of her father.
“Sometimes it's hard,” Jennings said. “Sometimes I walk in and all I can think of is him.”
Jennings and her mother taught the tricks of the trade Jennings' nephew and future owner, Alex Russell. Alex Russell, 37, said he, too, spent his childhood running around the store: he had fond memories of rolling tape down the aisles with his brother when the shop was slow.
“Man, Grandma would chew my a-- out for that one,” Alex Russell said.
“But they still did it every time,” Margaret Russell said.
There will always be a woman in this business, to be a woman-owned store.”
– ROBYN JENNINGS, owner of Hammock Hardware & Supply
Now, Alex Russell’s daughter Tinsley, 10, is learning how to run Hammock Hardware, too. She spends her summers at Hammock Hardware & Supply, alternating between ringing customers up at the cash register and playing with the children of Nina Caton, a 10-year employee at Hammock Hardware.
Jennings said she started Tinsley’s education early – when the girl was just an infant, Jennings would carry her great niece around the store and tell her what all the tools did.
For four decades the shop has been women-owned and women-run, Jennings said. After her, Jennings said her great niece Tinsley will inherit the shop alongside Tinsley’s father Alex Russell and uncle, John Russell.
“It’s a Russell hardware store. It belongs to the Russells,” Jennings said. It’s equally important that Tinsley inherit at the same time as her father and uncle, Jennings said. “There will always be a woman in this business, to be a woman-owned store.”
