Section 31:  Campbell Family Tree

On the 10th of August, 1850, a fine boy arrived in our family and was named James Hallock. He was a good sized, healthy child till he was six months old when he caught a cold that settled on his lungs and he never got over it. We tried all that the doctors could do - blistered the poor little fellow on breast and back and dosed him with cod liver oil. His Mother and I sat up with him for weeks -- she in the fore part of the night and I from one or two o'clock till morning. I still thought he ought to get well. In the spring he was still growing weaker. The doctor said if anything would save him it would be a change of air, and along the last of May I took his Mother and him down to Brother Oliver's in Center County and left them there, but it did no good, and on the 10th day of July, 1851, our boy died and was buried in the graveyard at Pine Grove where, with two little cousins, he still sleeps. Of course, I took Mary along, and after our fall courts I went down and brought her and her Mother home. He had been long sick and for a while the house appeared very desolate without him.

On the 4th day of May, 1852, another child was born in our house -- a daughter, and we called her Elisabeth. At first she appeared healthy, but in the fall she began to decline and medicine seemed to do her no good and she too died in November of the same year.

These losses were hard to bear and were very discouraging, but we had done all we could and submitted to these painful dispensations. Long after I thought of those dear little children and felt desolate. I now feel happy that they are gone and escaped the troubles, the temptations and the sins of an evil world and I have not a doubt they are happy.

I was now a man of middle age, enjoying vigorous health, doing a large business and acquiring property and some influence. The work was no trouble to me unless sometimes on court week I got rather more of it than was pleasant, but I enjoyed my business life and felt that I was prospering.

About once a year, instead of going to a watering place, I took a trip to Mifflin County to see my Mother and friends there. Frequently Mother and I would take a trip around among the four or five families composing the Campbell settlement and took us about a week to get around. Uncle Joe's old home was a pleasant place to visit. He married Elisabeth Oliver (Aunt Betsey she was always called) on the 17th day of April 1813 and went immediately to live where they remained for life. Their oldest daughter Isabella was born February 18th, 1814. Their second daughter, Margaret Jane, was born November 19th, 1815. Joseph was born November 6th, 1817. Elisabeth L. was born January 15th, 1820, and died unmarried February 7th, 1883. Hugh McClelland Campbell was born November 17th, 1821, and died in California May 11th, 1850. Andrew W. was born November 6th, 1823. Robert Douglas was born October 30th, 1826, and still lives on the old farm. Mary Rachel Campbell was born August 26th, 1830. She married a Wilson and removed to Illinois and had two children, Myra and Bruce, and died November 17th, 1859. Isabella died December 9th, 1863. All these eight children lived to maturity. The three boys living have done well and are in good circumstances. The three oldest girls did not marry. Margaret Jane is living on the old place with her niece, Myra Wilson, and she too is getting to be an old maid and is spoken of as an excellent girl. The family grew up on the farm adjoining ours -- double cousins and being a great deal together.

Joseph Campbell married Elisabeth S. Wilson on the 29th day of March, 1849, and commenced housekeeping on the farm on which he now lives. They have had seven children, as follows:

Marian E. born April 2nd, 1850

Joseph Milton born September 15th, 1853

Emma Jane born March 2, 1856

Wm. Wilson born June 16th, 1858 -- deceased

Oliver McClelland born July 6th, 1862

Robert Lincoln born March 3d, 1865

Bessie Mary born May 30th, 1868

The oldest married a man named Albert Cowars on the 27th of December, 1874, and lived her married life in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and died November 27th, 1886, leaving three children. Joseph Milton is married and lives on a farm adjoining his father. Emma is married to a man named Cummings. McClelland is a graduate of Jefferson and Washington College -- is now in Minnesota teaching. The two younger children are at home.

Andrew W. Campbell, on the 22d day of November, 1854, married Margaret Jane Wilson. They have but one child living -- Mary Elisabeth, born February 11th, 1863. Andrew is a good farmer and in independent circumstances.

Robert Douglas married Mary W. Marsden on the 10th of October, 1872. Their children are Florence Rebecca, born January 5th, 1874; Douglas Marsden, born August 21, 1880, and Oliver Hubert, born May 7th, 1883. They had another daughter dead. His wife, Mary, died March 16th, 1884. He lives on his father's mansion farm.

It is somewhat singular that about the beginning of 1805, Samuel the youngest son of my Grandfather, Robert Campbell, married Agnes, the third daughter of John Oliver. In the spring of 1807 my father married Rachel, the older daughter, and in 1812, or early in 1813, Uncle Joe married the second daughter, and afterwards John Campbell of Center County, then a widower, married Jane Oliver, another daughter of John Oliver.

Uncle Samuel Campbell bought a farm in Washington County near Shirleysburg where I believe all his children were born. Early in 1830 or before 1835 he and his family removed out to Monroe County, Ohio, where he died on the 19th day of September, 1841, aged 63 years and seven days. The family of Uncle Samuel are as follows:

John Oliver, born December, 1806, died July 29th, 1885, in California

Joseph Furguson, born September 21st, 1808, living in Bedford County, Pennsylvania

Jane, born October 27th, 1810, married a man named Hand, lives in Illinois

Margaret Ann, born December 22d, 1812, married a man named Hames, is now a widow and lives at Plymouth in the state of Indiana

Mary Agnes, born July 5th, 1815, married a man named Ray, is now a widow and lives at Plymouth, Indiana

Robert was born December 14th, 1817, and died October 14th, 1844

Elisabeth Isabella, born February 17th, 1820, married a man named Gilson and died November 13th, 1858

Samuel Franklin, born May 5th, 1822, and died November 18th, 1858

Casandence Lyon born 16th [sic], 1824, married a man named McDonald and died July 2d, 1855

James Alexander was born December 22d, 1826, is a bachelor and lives in Kanyon City, Grant County, in the State of Oregon. When he left the State of Indiana a young man, he copied the family record off his father's Bible. Afterwards the Bible was burned with the house of Mrs. Ray. The children's ages could not all be made out by memory, but Miss Cornelia E. Campbell, daughter of John Oliver, in corresponding with her Uncle James A., happened to mention the loss of the old Bible and he wrote her a copy and she sent a copy of that to me. Then the information came to me by a long and roundabout way, but I have no doubt it is correct.

John Oliver, the oldest of the family, was a large, fine looking man. He married out in Ohio and wandered out to Iowa -- got to keeping a hotel out somewhere not far from where Omaha is now. It was about the time of the great emigration to the Pacific Coast and his house did a large business and he made some money, but the western fever finally struck him and he packed up, took his wife and five young children and started across the plains and mountains -- was about three months on the way, lost most of his teams and property in crossing the desert, but finally got across the Nevada mountains to the settlements and placer diggings; found himself in the occident with a wife and five children, without money or property and nothing to do but dig for gold. However, he rented a boarding house and made his first money feeding golddiggers; got to trading and gathered some money and bought a farm (a ranch, he called it) right on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. During all this time he had never written to his friends and they did not know what had become of him. About 12 years after he was lost I received a letter one morning from him, stating that he had dreamed one night that all his friends were dead and he became anxious to hear from them but did not know where to write to any of them -- that he happened to meet a man from Clarion County who told him I was living there and so he wrote to me. I knew his brothers and sisters were anxious to hear of him, so I immediately enclosed the letter to Jane Hand with whom his Mother was living.

The answer I got from Cousin Jane was they were very glad to hear from him but that his Mother was buried about three days before the letter arrived. I wrote to Oliver about as severe a letter as I could for neglecting his friends for so long a time. This brought an answer from his daughter, Cornelia, with whom I have kept up an occasional correspondence ever since. Some 10 or 15 years ago he came over and spent a winter among his friends -- I think two or three weeks with me. On his return home the train was overtaken by a storm in the Nevada mountains and were snowed up a day or two, the thermometer dropping down 25 degrees below zero. When the train got through and started one morning down the mountain it was intensely cold, but by evening they were in the valley of the Sacramento amid clover blossoms and a temperature of 80 degrees above, and the passengers suffered as much with the heat as they had done with the cold. Oliver wrote me it was the most trying experience he ever had and he caught a very bad cold.

In 1838 he married a Miss Matilda L. Shear in Ohio, by whom he had five children, as follows

Carlisla E., born in Ohio in 1840, married Wm. F. Jess in California

Cornelia E., born in Delphi, Indiana, in 1842, unmarried

Oliver, born March 14th, 1847, is married and has five children

Benjamin Franklin, born in 1851, married and has four children

A. E. Campbell, born in 1854, not married