James Campbell

James Campbell was born January 15, 1852, in Monroe County, West Virginia, a few miles from Union, to Dinnah Alexander Campbell and Levi Campbell. He grew up with Levi, Floyd, Henry, Noah and Nancy, half-siblings he never thought of as anything but brothers and sisters. They were enslaved by John Alexander, who held about twenty people on a stock farm. James's job was milking, and he was happy to pick berries too, since both kept him out of harder work. He rose at four every morning to bring in the cows.

He remembered maple-sugar making by night, Saturday dances that lasted as long as the candles, and a two-week Christmas break that began once each person's woodpile was cut. The enslaver's son went to war, ran from Harper's Ferry, came home with a pair of crutches, and used them until the war was over. James saw a neighbor boy caught by patrollers and beaten for running away, which, he said, took any notion of running out of his head.

He never saw money until he came to Gallipolis, Ohio, after the war, and said that with just two cents he'd jingle them for the sound. No one in his family could read or write. He learned after coming north and called it the biggest thing he ever tackled, and the thing that made him happiest.