| Notes |
- The following sketch of Governor David Campbell is found at pages 766-767 of the book "History of Southwest Virginia" (published 1903), by Lewis Preston Summers:
"The subject of this sketch was the eldest son of John Campbell and Elizabeth McDonald, his wife, of Hall's Bottom, Washington County, Virginia, and was born on the 2d of August, 1779, at Royal Oak (now in Smyth county), and was about eight years old when his father removed to Hall's Bottom. There he grew up, receiving such education as the frontier settlements could provide. In the year 1794, in his fifteenth year, he was appointed an Ensign in Captain John Davis's company of militia. In 1799 he was commissioned a captain of a company of light infantry assigned to the Seventieth Regiment of Militia, and in the fall of the same year he married his cousin, Mary Hamilton [Comment: Mary was the daughter of Colonel David Campbell of Campbell's Station, Tennessee]. He studied law, and was licensed, but never practiced his profession. In 1802 he was appointed deputy clerk of the County Court of Washington county, and chiefly discharged the duties of the office to the year 1812. On the 6th of July, 1812, he was commissioned a major in the Twelfth Regiment of Infantry, United States army, and marched with the forces to the lakes of Canada, where he served under Generals Alexander Smyth and Van Rensselaer. On the 12th of March, 1813, he was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the Thirtieth Regiment, where he served until the year 1814, when he resigned his commission. Upon his return home he entered the service of Virginia as aide-de-camp to Governor Barbour, and gave valuable assistance to organizing the large military forces called into service in the summer of 1814. In the year 1815 he was elected by the General Assembly as general of the Third Brigade of the Virginia Militia. On the 25th of January, 1815 he was appointed colonel of the Third Virginia Cavalry, and was afterward transferred to the Fifth Regiment of Cavalry. Upon his return to Abingdon, he entered the clerk's office, where he remained until 1820, when he was elected a member of the State Senate from the Abingdon district for the term of four years. In 1824 he was elected clerk of the County Court of Washington county, which position he occupied until he took his seat as Governor of Virginia, on the 31st of March, 1837. Governor Campbell, at the time of his election, was a Jacksonian Democrat, but while Governor, and during the administration of President Van Buren, the sub-treasury scheme and the standing army bill, as they were commonly called, were made party measures, and being opposed to them, he warmly supported General Harrison in the presidential campaign of 1840, and ever after acted with the Whig party. Governor Campbell, in his first message to the General Assembly, proposed the establishment of the common school system, of which he was one of the earliest advocates. Upon his retirement from the position of Governor of the Commonwealth, he was commissioned a justice of the peace for Washington county, and was diligent in the discharge of his duties as such until the year 1852, when he returned to private life, after having spent nearly one-half a century in the public service. In person Governor Campbell was about five feet eleven inches in height, spare and erect in carriage, with dark hair and eyes and intellectual countenance and pleasing manners. He died at "Mont Calm," his home, now the home of Colonel Cummings, on March 19th, 1859, without issue, and his remains were interred in Sinking Spring Cemetery, Abingdon, Virginia."
WILL OF GOVERNOR DAVID CAMPBELL
David Campbell's will, dated 4 February 1857, with codicil dated 7 September 1857, was probated in Washington County VA on 29 March 1859. [See Washington County VA, Will Book 14, pages 402-407.]
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1779 - 1859 (79 years)
