Fayette County, West Virginia Biography of JAMES A. CAMPBELL, M. D. This biography was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: ********************************************** ***The submitter does not have a connection*** ********to the subject of this sketch.******** ********************************************** This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, pg. 621 Fayette JAMES A. CAMPBELL, M. D. In 1894, nearly thirty years ago, Doctor Campbell began the practice of medi- cine and surgery at Beckley, and through the intervening years he has not only looked after a large private practice but has established and conducted a splendid private hos- pital for this community. Doctor Campbell is one of the most progressive surgeons and physicians in the state, and has kept in touch with the advancing knowledge of the profession by association with some of the greatest sur- geons and clinics in the country. Doctor Campbell was born at Cliff Top in Fayette County, West Virginia, October 4, 1873, son of Anthony and Margaret (Nickell) Campbell. The ancestry of the Campbell family is a long and distinguished one, running hack into the earliest times of Scotland and also of Colonial America. This ancestral record is too long to go into, but some of the facts are interesting in connection with the career of Doctor Campbell. It is a matter of record that Archibald Campbell, the seventh Earl of the House of Argyle, was associated with one of the very earliest projects to colonize Virginia. There was a Rev. Isaac Campbell who was ordained and licensed by the Bishop of London to preach in Virginia on July 6, 1747. Two cousins, called Black David and White David Campbell, were among the pioneer settlers of Culpeper County, Virginia, and Black David, who was born in 1710, moved from there to Augusta County. Another branch of the family' was represented by John and Mary Campbell, who immigrated to America, first settling in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and about 1730 moved to Virginia. Robert and Dugal Campbell moved from Pennsylvania to Orange County. Among the sons of John Campbell, just mentioned, were Patrick, Robert and Davis, who settled in Orange County in 1732. The grandfather of Doctor Campbell was William Camp- hell, and he was descended from the pioneer Campbells in Orange and Culpeper counties. The Campbells were nu- merously represented in the Revolutionary war period. The father of Doctor Campbell was also born at Cliff Top in Fayette county, while his mother was born at Pickway in Monroe County. Anthony Campbell was a farmer. He was a Union soldier at the time of the Civil war. He and two comrades were captured by some Bush- whackers. Watching his chance as his captors lay asleep he made his escape, reached the home of Bob Scotts at Crow, near Beckley, and after explaining his identity of a Union soldier and his affliction from rheumatism, he was taken in and cared for and was kept in hiding whenever the Southerners came around looking for him. He finally reached home, and had to stay in bed with rheumatism for six months. He was a man given to adventure and had been one of the California forty-niners in search of gold, going out to the coast when only seventeen. At one time he left West Virginia and went out to Decatur, Illinois, where he took up a land claim, but fell sick with the chills and fever and soon returned to West Virginia. Both he and his wife are now deceased. James A. Campbell after completing his common school education went out to Concordia, Kansas, where an older married sister lived, and while living with her he worked and paid his way while getting a high school course. Later he entered the University of Louisville Medical School, where he graduated M. D. in 1894. Immediately after qualifying for his profession he located at Beckley, and has long stood in the front rank of physicians and sur- geons of Raleigh County. Doctor Campbell since the early years of his practice has been taking time to attend medical conventions and clinics and schools of medicine. He returned to Louisville in 1899, took a course in the New York Polyclinic in 1906, took special work under Job Prices at Philadelphia in 1908 and also under J. B. Beavers in the same city in that year. He was a student in the Johns Hopkins University in 1920, attended clinics of the Mayo Brothers at Rochester, Minnesota, in 1921, and of Doctor Ochsner at Chicago in the same year, and also the Crile Clinic at Cleveland. In his post-graduate work he has largely specialized in diseases of women and abdominal surgery. February 14, 1910, Doctor Oampbell organized and began the building at Beckley of the Campbell Hospital. He also built what was known as Hospital No. 2, both of which were burned in a fire that nearly destroyed the town. He is now financially and professionally inter- ested in the Kings Daughters Hospital, which when com- pleted will rank as one of the very finest hospitals in the state in point of equipment. It contains seventy-six rooms. Doctor Campbell is president of the County Board of Health in Raleigh County, and during the war was a member of the Examining Board. He served in 1920-21 as mayor of Beckley, and when he retired from office January 1, 1922, it was conceded that he had given the city the best administration the community had ever had. Doctor Campbell is not in politics, but his heart and soul are in any community undertaking. He is a member of the Episcopal Church, belongs to the County and State Medi- cal societies, the Southern and American Medical associa- tions. and is a Royal Arch and Knight Templar Mason and Shriner; October 12, 1906, at Beckley, Doctor Campbell married Hallie Mae Payne, daughter of Charles Henry and Kizzie (Lindsay) Payne, of Newport News, Virginia. Her father was a farmer and stock man. Doctor and Mrs. Oamp- bell have a son, James A., Jr., born in 1911.