Billings (Hammatt) is born in Milton.

The son of Ebenezer and Mary (Janes) Billings, Hammatt Billings moves with his family to the West End in 1820, attends the Mayhew School and graduates from English High School. Billings works as an engraver and illustrator for Abel Bowen and then as a draftsman for architects Asher Benjamin and Ammi Young, before starting his own firm with his brother in 1841. He marries Sarah Mason in 1843, and then Phoebe Warren, and lives at 59 Camden Street. Compared by biographer Joseph O’Gorman to Michelangelo, Billings dies while visiting his brother in New York City on November 14, 1874. He is buried in Milton.