USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina biography, Volume V > Part 69
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The eighth generation was represented by Alex- ander Campbell, who lived from 1750 to 1808. He served as a trustee of Washington College, Vir- ginia, under the original charter from 1782 to 1807. He was also county surveyor, "a position at that time of great importance."' His son Robert S. Campbell, who was born in 1790 and died in 1861, married Isabella Paxton.
John Lyle Campbell, son of Robert S. and Isabella Campbell, enjoyed a place of high dis- tinction among the educators of the South. He was born in 1818 and died in 1886. His birth occurred in Rockbridge County, Virginia, and he died at Lexington in that state. He received his Master of Arts degree from Washington College, now Washington and Lee University, in 1843, and on leaving college became assistant in an Academy at Staunton, Virginia, and afterwards had charge of a similar institution at Richmond, Kentucky. In 1851 he was called to the Chair of Chemistry and Geology in Washington College, now Washing- ton and Lee University, and that office he con- tinued to occupy until his death thirty-five years later. He was a recognized authority on the geology of Virginia and wrote reports that fur- nished a great mass of valuable data and was also frequent contributor to scientific journals. Among his more important works were: "A Manuel of Scientific and Practical Agriculture," published at Philadelphia in 1859; "Geology and Mineral Resources of the James River Valley," published in 1882. In 1881 Hampden Sidney Col- lege of Virginia conferred upon him the degree LL. D.
John Lyle Campbell married Harriet Peters Bailey. She was born at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, April 18, 1824, and was of lineage not less dis- tinguished than was the family of her husband. She was of English stock, the Baileys dating from the time of the Plymouth Rock Colony. One of her distinguished soldier ancestors was Col. John Bailey, who was born at Hanover, Massachusetts, October 30, 1730, and died there October 27, 1810. "He was lieutenant-colonel of the Plymouth Regi- ment at the beginning of the Revolutionary war and succeeded Colonel John Thomas in its com- mand. When the Continental Army was organized he became colonel of the Second Massachusetts, in which command he remained during the war, earning distinction especially in the campaign
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against Burgoyne," [Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography. ] Colonel Bailey 's son Leb- beus married Sarah Sylvester, and one of their sons was Rufus William Bailey, whose daughter Harriet became the wife of John Lyle Campbell on July 8, 1846.
Rev. Rufus William Bailey was one of the great men of his day in religious and educational affairs in the South. He was born at North Yarmouth, Maine, April 13, 1793, was graduated from Dart- mouth College in 1816, taught in academies in New Hampshire and Maine, and took up and pros- ecuted the study of law under the renowned Daniel Webster. However, at the end of a year he decided to go into the ministry and entered And- over Theological Seminary. He completed his studies there, was licensed to preach and during his first pastorate at Norwich Plain was also teacher in a local military school. In 1823 he was installed pastor of the First Congregational church at Pittsfield, where he founded the Pittsfield Female Seminary. At the end of four years he went South for the sake of his health and subse- quently continued his work as an educator for more than twenty years in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. In the latter state he traveled at one time extensively as agent of the American Colonization Society. In the meantime, in 1829, he established the Richland Normal School in South Carolina, and in 1842 founded the Augusta Female Seminary, now the Mary Bald- win Seminary at Staunton, Virginia. In 1854 he was elected Professor of Languages at Austin College, then situated at Huntsville, Texas, and in 1858 he became its president. He filled that office until 1860 and died at Huntsville, Texas, April 26, 1863. He was author of a series of newspaper letters on slavery which were pub- lished under the title of "The Issue," also of volumes of sermons and other works, including a text book on grammar which was extensively used in Southern schools, and "The Scholar's Com- panion, " a combination of speller and dictionary.
To measure up to the achievements and the character of such ancestors is a task that would test the best resources and talents of any man. Rev. Dr. R. F. Campbell was born at the home of his parents in Lexington, Virginia, December 12, 1858. He grew up in a home of high ideals and splendid culture, and his advantages there were supplemented by the best of schooling. He did his college work in the fine old institution in which his father was a professor, Washington and Lee University, from which he was graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1878 and Master of Arts in 1879. During the following three years he was a teacher, in the Kable Academy at Charlestown, West Virginia, during 1879-80, in Tinkling Spring High School in Virginia in 1880-81, and in McGuire's School at Richmond, Virginia, 1881-82. Having in the meantime definitely determined upon the ministry as a career, he was a student in Union Theological Seminary at Hampden Sidney, Virginia, from 1882 to 1885. Mr. Campbell received his degree Doctor of Divinity from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1893.
He was licensed by the Lexington Presbytery August 30, 1884, and ordained May 18, 1885. Though in the ministry more than thirty years, he has filled only four distinct pastorates-Millboro and Windy Cove Churches in Bath County, Vir- ginia, 1885 to 1889; Davidson College Church in North Carolina, 1889-90; Buena Vista in Virginia,
1890-92; and pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Asheville since 1892.
Without intention to describe in detail the great work. that Dr. Campbell has performed in more than thirty years of ministry, it is important to emphasize the character of his leadership. He is first of all a broad-minded student of human life in both its material and spiritual significance. But he has never been content merely to state and compile the results of studies. He has sought to give vitality to what he has learned and discovered, either in leading men to further heights of aspira- tion or achievement or in fiercely combating those conspicuously fortified or insidious evils and ten- dencies which still flourish among mankind and require everlasting determination and vigilance to eradicate. Considering his career as a whole it is by no means an exaggeration to claim that Dr. Campbell has been one of the most construc- tive leaders in public thought and action in the South during the last quarter of a century.
In 1896 Dr. Campbell led the movement for the erection of the Presbytery of Asheville by the Synod of North Carolina. In 1914-15 he was equally prominent in the movement for the erec- tion of the Synod of Appalachia by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church in the United States. Both of these movements have had an important bearing on the work of home mis- sions and of Christian education in the Appal. achian Mountains.
Since 1897 Dr. Campbell has been a trustee of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, and in 1917 became a trustee of Stonewall Jackson College at Abingdon, Virginia. He has been presi- dent of the Board of Trustees of the Montreat Normal School, North Carolina, since 1916, was founder and since 1911 president of the Good Samaritan Mission at Asheville, is vice president for North Carolina of the Lord's Day Alliance of the United States; is chairman of the Home Missions Committees of the Asheville Presbytery and of the Synod of Appalachia. He is the author of a plan for the federation of the Presbyterian and Reformed churches of the United States, in- cluding about twelve ecclesiastical bodies, on the basis of a bicameral congress modeled after that of the Federal Union of the States in this Re- public. This plan has commended itself to many of the liberal men in the church and is now under serious consideration.
The World war has naturally demanded of Dr. Campbell services commensurate and proportion- ate to his great ability and influence. He is a member of the executive committee and chairman of the Civilian Relief Department of the Ashe- ville Chapter of the American Red Cross. For a year or more he has been active in patriotic work in connection with the great war, making public addresses on Liberty Loans, War Savings Stamps, Red Cross and other worthy causes.
In 1912 Dr. Campbell started an agitation through the public press pointing out the injustice of foisting the "red light district" on the negroes. In Asheville as in other cities the attempt to deal vigorously with the social evil had merely shifted it from the better sections of the city to the negro quarter, where it had up to that time flourished without special protest except from the better class of negroes who were, however, comparatively uninfluential. Dr. Campbell was unable to satisfy his conscience with this condi- tion, and he presented the matter so vigorously and so persistently that, with the fortunate co-
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operation of a police judge who was in sympathy with him, these houses were completely driven out from the residential section occupied by the negroes in Asheville, and finally the red light dis- trict was suppressed altogether. Because of the widespread existence of the evil any fight of this kind is really a matter of national news and interest, and what Asheville accomplished had so many unusual phases that the matter drew forth a lengthy editorial from that old and dignified American magazine, "The Harper's Weekly."
Dr. Campbell when a boy organized and taught a night school for colored men, later was a teacher and superintendent of Sunday school for negroes, and thus has had almost a lifelong interest in the advancement of the negro race and has thoroughly studied the problems of the race and their environment in the South. A nota- ble result of this was a sermon which he preached in 1898, and which was subsequently, owing to requests from all over the country, published in pamphlet form under the title "Some Aspects of the Race Problem in the South." This was first put out in an edition of three thousand copies and a few months later a second edition was issued of ten thousand copies.
Other notable pamphlets and sermons which have appeared with Dr. Campbell as author are as follows : "Mission Work among the Mountain Whites,'' "Classification of the Mountain Whites, '' "The Church Fair," "The Use and Abuse of Animals,"' "The Dog in Literature and in Life, " "Inter-relation of the Individual and the Institutions of Society," "A First-Day Duty for Everyone, " "Union Seminary in the Pastorate -an address at the centennial celebration of the Seminary (1912)," "Centennial Address, Synod of North Carolina in the Last Fifty Years, or the Presbyterian Church an Evangelistic Agency," (1913), "Harmful Child Labor in the United States,"' "Sunday Laws and Liberty."'
Dr. Campbell has been much interested in legis- lation for the protection of the weekly rest day. He holds that as "the sabbath was made for man" (for the genus homo) it should be pro- tected by law, just as the sanctity of the family and the rights of property are protected and that no individual or corporation should be permitted to break down the beneficent institution or to rob men of its blessings. Where Sunday work is necessary, as it sometimes is, provision should be made for legislative enactment as in France, Canada and other countries, to insure to the three million workers in the United States who now labor seven days in the week, one day's rest in seven. Legislation should not bear in any way on the religious observance of Sunday further than to protect the rights of those who wish to worship, and to encourage incidentally the reverent use of the day.
Dr. Campbell is a charter member of the Pen and Plate Club of Asheville. He is a foundation member of Gamma Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa Society, Washington and Lee University, in 1911. Politically he is a democrat.
On October 8, 1885, at Lexington, Virginia, Dr. Campbell married Sarah Montgomery Ruffner, daughter of William Henry and Harriet Ann (Gray) Ruffner., Dr. William Henry Ruffner was organizer and first superintendent of the public school system of Virginia, and became known as "the Horace Mann of the South."
Mrs. Campbell, who died at Asheville, North Carolina, August 20, 1917, was not only a wife
and mother but a woman of distinction in the life and affairs of Asheville. She was a graduate of the New Jersey State Normal School at Tren- ton, was a student of piano in the Boston Con- servatory of Music. At Asheville she was founder and president of the Saturday Music Club, a charter member of the Friendly Dozen Book Club, the first woman's club organized in that city, and was a charter member of the Paidology Club of Asheville, one of the first clubs in this country for child study.
Dr. Campbell has one son, Ruffner Campbell, who was born at Davidson College, North Caro- lina, December 17, 1889. He graduated from that institution, which for that reason might doubly clain his affection as his alma mater. He received the degree Bachelor of Science from Davidson in 1910 and in 1913 was graduated LL. B. from Washington and Lee University, and practised his profession as an attorney at law at Asheville, until in 1918 when he responded to the call of his country and enlisted in the Navy of the United States.
HOWARD WHITE is one of the most successful timber operators and lumber manufacturers in North Carolina. He has a wide experience both in railroading and in manufacturing lines.
In 1909 he came to Raleigh and established the Howard White Lumber Company, and he now con- trols the output of about fifty mills in North Car- olina, South Carolina and Georgia.
He was born in Matthews County, Virginia, April 6, 1880, a son of James Benjamin and Elizabeth W. (Gayle) White. His father was a successful Virginia merchant. Gaining his education in the public schools, finishing with the Portsmouth, Vir- ginia, Public School, Howard White took up work with the Seaboard Air Line Railway Company, be- ing connected with the accounting department for . nine years. For a time he was in charge of the agency accounts. He then became tie and timber agent for the Norfolk & Southern Railway, and bought all the materials throughout the period of construction of that road. On the completion of this road he moved to Raleigh and established his present business.
Mr. White is a member of the Country, Capital and Rotary clubs and also of the Elks Order. On September 10, 1906, at Portsmouth, Virginia, he married Miss Annie Wilson. They have three chil- dren, Anne, Sarah and Howard Jr.
JETER CONLEY PRITCHARD was born at Jones- boro, Tennessee, July 12, 1857. His parents were William H. and Elizabeth (Brown) Pritchard, the ancestry on the paternal side being Welsh and Irish, and Irish on the maternal. William H. Pritchard was a carpenter and builder, a hard- working man but never accumulated wealth. When the war between the states was precipitated, he was seven years above the age of enlistment but entered as a substitute for Moses Cone, father of. the Cone brothers of this state. He was in the Sixtieth Tennessee Volunteer Infantry under Col. John H. Crawford, and took part in the many notable battles in which this regiment. participated, the siege of Vicksburg, in particular. It was after the surrender of that city Mr. Pritchard was stricken with disease, which in modern warfare might have been prevented, and died at Mobile, Alabama.
The Pritchard family in the meanwhile suffered in the home, as so often has been the case when
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the head and wage earner has been called away. The close of hostilities found Jeter a lad of eight years, dependent upon his devoted mother's scant resources. At that time and place there were but few opportunities for a boy to provide for his own self support,especially for a boy anxious to secure an education. His mother deemed it wise, therefore, when he was twelve years old, to apprentice him to a trade, selecting that of a printer, with the thought that he could thus secure a practical educa- tion. When he went into the printing office he knew little of the elements of learning and could not yet write 'his own name. He was guided in the main by his mother's influence and determined to fulfill her expectations, and this he did by closely applying himself to his duties and taking every possible opportunity to improve himself. He made such rapid progress in the knowledge of his trade that at the end of his apprenticeship he easily secured the position of foreman of the Union Flag newspaper office at Jonesboro, which position he filled until the breaking out of the Asiatic cholera in Tennessee in the summer of 1873. He then left Jonesboro and entered school at Martins Creek Academy, where he attended two terms. After attending school he accepted a position as foreman of the Bakersville Independent, a weekly newspaper published at Bakersville, North Carolina. The dis- tance from Erwin to Bakersville is thirty-five miles and as the young printer had no reserved capital there was no other way to cover it except on foot, and when the future statesman and judge entered that town he carried his one silver coin, of the value of 10 cents, in a ragged pocket. In this brave acceptance of circumstances and resolute manner of overcoming them, the boy, for he was then only seventeen years of age, foreshadowed the man, in whom stern resolution, when known to be right, has always been a prominent character- istic. Mr. Pritchard profited by his new position, through it greater opportunities coming to him than he had ever before enjoyed, included in these being educational training and subsequently a part- nership in the Independent, of which he became associate editor.
At a later date he removed to Madison County, North Carolina, and entered into politics. In 1885 he represented that county in the General Assembly and was re-elected in 1887, and in this legislative body attained prominence by reason of the clarity of his judgment, his honesty and public spirit. About this time he began to realize what a knowl- edge of the law would mean to him, and with characteristic energy set about its study, hampered, however, by necessary farm duties and lack of a competent preceptor. All his life, however, he had faced and overcome difficulties and, great as they were in this case, he proved them not insurmount- able, and in 1887 secured his license and entered at once upon the practice of law.
While serving in the General Assembly, Mr. Pritchard had proved his quality of leadership and in 1888 the republican party nominated him for lieutenant-governor. In 1891 he again represented Madison County in the General Assembly, being now considered one of the strong republican leaders in the state, and he received the honor of being the caucus nominee of his party for the United States Senate. At the next election he was put forward for Congress from the Ninth District, where the republican strength had been weakened by the transfer of Mitchell County to another district, and, although Mr. Pritchard made gains in several counties, he went down to defeat
in the year that was generally disastrous to the republican party all over the country. In follow- ing the careers of public men many elements must come under consideration. The political situation at this time had been greatly changed by the growth of the Farmers' Alliance, which was mainly the foundation from which was developed the populist party, in rebellion against many of the usages of the old political parties. In North Caro- lina at that time there was much dissatisfaction and this particularly was the case in regard to the democratic party under President Cleveland 's administration. Mr. Pritchard was one of the clear-eyed politicians of the day who saw, before it was accomplished, that a co-operative campaign between the republicans and populists would re- sult in an anti-democratic legislature.
Because of the death of Senator Vance at this time, and also the expiration of the term of Senator Matt Ransom, two senators were to be chosen by the General Assembly. Mr. Pritchard was elected to fill the unexpired term of Senator Vance. In January, 1897, Senator Pritchard was re-elected United States senator for a term of six years. He was the only representative his party had from the southern states and soon found him- self called into consultation by the President and his republican colleagues in the Senate concerning all matters relating to southern affairs. In this position Senator Pritchard sustained himself well and his careful recommendation tended to strengthen his influence and bring him into still greater prominence in public matters. In addition to performing his duties at Washington so well Senator Pritchard also served as chairman of his party in the state and as national committeeman, and he entered enthusiastically into the successive campaigns in North Carolina. Through his gifts of oratory and his thorough understanding of public affairs he was one of the state's notable speakers and came to be considered the strongest republican leader that North Carolina had ever produced.
When the democrats were restored to power in 1900 political changes inevitably came and in 1903 Senator Overman succeeded Senator Prit- chard, whose term expired in March of that year. On leaving public life, as he supposed, Mr. Prit- chard accepted the position of assistant division counsel of the Southern Railroad, with head- quarters at Asheville, but on April 1, 1903, Presi- dent Roosevelt appointed him associate justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and he entered on a judicial career that speedily won for him a great reputation and gave the highest satisfaction to his friends. President Roosevelt still further demonstrated his confi- dence in Judge Pritchard by appointing him April 28, 1904, to succeed the late Judge Simon- ton as judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
One of the celebrated cases in modern criminal annals was the case of United States against Machem and others, which came before Judge Pritchard while a member of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia. The trial of this case covered seven weeks and involved many new points of law and was fought on each side with great ability. During its progress a multitude of exceptions were taken to the rulings of the court, but, notwithstanding the judge was sitting in a strange jurisdiction and many unusual prob- lems were brought forward for the first time in that jurisdiction, on appeal to the Court of Appeals
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and to the Supreme Court all of his rulings were affirmed.
An interesting case to mention is that in which Judge Pritchard immediately after his appoint- ment as United States Circuit judge, granted a writ of habeas corpus at the instance of Hon- orable Josephus Daniels, who had been adjudged guilty of contempt of court by the district judge at Raleigh, and on the return of the writ two days later he discharged Mr. Daniels. The judge wrote a lengthy and exhaustive opinion in this case, stat- ing the reasons for his action in the premises, as well as the general law of contempt applicable to the courts of the United States. This opinion has been quoted generally by the American press as well as by all the leading journals in foreign countries, and a most favorable estimate of this decision has prevailed.
Another case which has attracted much interest was the celebrated one of Folsom versus Ninety- Six Township, South Carolina. The Legislature of that state, by an amendment to the state con- stitution, abolished the corporate entity of certain townships which had issued bonds in aid of the construction of a railroad; and also by legislative enactment the territory originally embraced in such townships was transferred to a new county known as Greenwood, for the purpose of invalidating the securities issued. Judge Pritchard sustained the validity of the securities. Still another important and far-reaching decision was in the case of Fol- som et al. vs. Greenwood County from South Carolina. Novel principles of law as well as im- portant interests were involved in these decisions, which were made by the judge without any direct precedent to guide him, but here as in other cases his decisions have been sustained, his adjudications being esteemed by the profession as sound and based on the foundation principles of the law. His courtesy, his fairness and impartiality on the bench have won for him the highest personal regard from the bar, irrespective of the admira- tion aroused by his unusual judicial qualifications.
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