“Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County,” published:  
Chicago;  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1892.

WILLIAM L. CAMPBELL dates his arrival in Texas in 1851, having come 
to this State with his parents and settled in Dallas county.  He was born in 
Jefferson county, East Tennessee, April 23, 1832, being nineteen years old at 
the time the family emigrated to Texas.  After remaining on the farm with 
his father for some years, he took up the carpenter’s trade and worked at it.  
At the breaking out of the Civil war he was in the Indian Nation working on 
a Government sawmill.  The camp broke up on account of the war, and the 
mill was never finished.  He came home and soon afterward enlisted in the 
Eighteenth Texas Cavalry, Colonel Darnell.  Reaching the command, he 
found his brother sick and was detailed to wait on him.  The command left 
and was captured before he and his brother could join them.  In the spring 
they reported at Little Rock and were sent to Pine Bluff, remaining at the 
latter place until June.  There he was taken with typhoid fever and was 
moved to the country.  In August he came home, reported at Dallas, and was 
ordered to Shreveport.  There he was put on guard duty; was subsequently 
detailed as carpenter in the ordnance department and was sent to Tyler, 
where he remained until the close of the war.  Returning home, he worked 
on the farm for awhile and afterward turned his attention to the carpenter’s 
trade again.  In 1872 he commenced surveying, and at that, as in other lines 
of work, he has been successful.  He has done private surveying and has 
been deputized by the court to do work, but never ran or served as county 
surveyor.  Although of late years he has given his attention chiefly to 
farming, he still does some surveying.  Mr. Campbell has three farms, 
having two rented and living on the other.  He has eighty acres of his home 
farm under cultivation, and everything about the premises indicates the 
owner to be a man of thrift and enterprise.  Mr. Campbell has given some 
attention to fruit culture, with partial success.  He has the largest peach 
orchard in this part of the county, and also has some apples.  The black land 
he thinks is not suited to fruit culture.

Robert F. Campbell, father of the subject of our sketch, was a native of 
Tennessee, and while a resident of that State served as Justice of the Peace.  
He was engaged in agricultural pursuits all his life, his death occurring in 
this State November 18, 1881.  By his first wife, nee Jane C. David, of 
Tennessee, he had six children, William L. being the oldest.  The names of 
the others are Lodemia A., Sarept A., James W., and Margaret E.  The 
mother departed this life about 1842.  In March, 1850, the father wedded 
Miss Mary Hoffer.  Her paternal ancestors were Swiss, and from her 
mother’s people she inherited some Choctaw blood.  By his second marriage 
Robert F. Campbell had ten children, all having died except three.  His 
widow is now a resident of Plano.

December 11, 1881, William L. Campbell was united in marriage with Miss 
Catherine R. Rankin, daughter of Patrick M. Rankin, of East Tennessee.  To 
them have been born five children, viz.: Robert E., born September 10, 
1882; Emily J., May 14, 1884; Carrie M., October 7, 1885; LaFayette R., 
June 26, 1887; Lucy E., July 28, 1889, and Archibald Ray, born November 
17, 1891.  Lafayette R. died July 3, 1888.

Politically, Mr. Campbell is a Democrat, and believes in prohibition.  He 
was a member of the Grange before that organization broke up here.  The 
Campbell family are members of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

Submitted by: Justina Cook