Hamilton Campbell

Place of death has also been erroneously reported to be Oregon, United States.

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• http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=71501554

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Campbell, Hamilton (c. 1812-1863) Daguerrotypist, ambrotypist, photographer, engraver, cabinetmaker; active Corvallis, Ore., c. 1854-1859; Eugene, Ore., 1857; Salem, Ore., 1858; San Francisco 1858, c. 1859-1862.

Hamilton Campbell was born in Kanawha County, Virginia (present West Virginia) on June 12, 1812. He was descended from the Scottish Clan Argyle. His father, Robert Campbell, came to America in the late eighteenth century and established a salt-mining business. On February 5, 1835, in Sangamon County, Illinois, Hamilton Campbell married Miss Harriet B. Biddle, and eighteen-year-old from Amherst Court House, Virginia. For several years the couple lived in Springfield, Illinois, where Hamilton worked as a carpenter and cabinetmaker. Their daughter, Mary D., was born in 1838 or 1839. On September 26, 1838, the Campbells attended a lecture in Springfield by Reverend Jason Lee, the famed Oregon missionary who was on a tour to recruit new colonists for his Willamette Valley missions. The Campbells succumbed to Lee's passionate call and joined a group of fifty-one missionaries who, on October 9, 1839, sailed aboard the Lausanne from New York around Cape Horn to Oregon.

The Campbells landed at Fort Vancouver on June 1, 1840. Upon arriving at Lee's mission near Salem, Campbell began work on the construction of the parsonage. By the winter of 1843-44 he was superintendent of the mission's Indian school at Chemeketa, and in 1849 he engraved the dies for the Oregon Exchange Company's "Beaver Money." In 1850 the Campbells lived in Marion County, Oregon, where Hamilton was once again making a living as a cabinetmaker. In addition to daughter Mary, the family now also included Maria A., nine (who had the distinction of being the first white child born in Salem); Gustavus ("Gus") Davis, eight; Hariette (or Harriet) A., six; and Lydia H, three. Campbell was a member of the construction crew for the steamer Canemah, build in the Oregon town of that name in 1851. Following the closing of the mission, Campbell settled on a land claim in Oregon's Chehalem Valley and became a pastor to local Indians, preaching to them in their own languages.

Although Campbell reportedly established a daguerreian portrait gallery in Corvallis, Oregon Territory, around 1854, the earliest known advertisement for the establishment appeared in the Portland Weekly Oregonian of March 28, 1857. At that time Campbell was taking daguerreotypes and abrotypes, selling daguerreian stock and equipment, and offering to fill orders "from a distance" for landscapes and views of buildings. He also did engraving work, watchmaking, and jewelry and musical instrument repairs, and was an agent for Grover and Bakers Sewing Machines.

In June 1857, Campbell announced his intention to operate a portrait gallery in Eugene, Oregon Territory, "for a short time." Melainotypes were now part of his repertoire. He spent the summer of 1858 in San Francisco working with an artist whom Campbell identified only as "one of the best practical and most popular Photographers in Europe or America." That fall he returned to Salem and opened a picture gallery. He equipped it with a large-format camera reputed to have cost over five thousand dollars. By the end of that year, Campbell announced that his Salem gallery would remain open full time under his personal supervision, while an operator would tend his Corvallis gallery. By then Campbell was offering ambrotypes, calotypes, sphereotypes, and colored or plain photographs.

Campbell and his family moved to San Francisco in 1859 or 1860. At the time he was canvassed for the 1860 Census, his personal value was only six hundred dollars, a considerable drop from his 1850 assets of five thousand dollars. Three new children had joined the family since 1850; Esther, Sarah and William A., all born in Oregon. By April 1860, Campbell and William Henry Towne were partners in the Campbell and Towne photographic gallery at 115 Montgomery Street, "over A. Austin's Store," San Francisco. This partnership endured for at least two months. From September to December 1860, Campbell and Alexander Edouart, Sr., owned the Edouart and Campbell gallery at 182 Washington Street. Campbell was listed in different 1861 San Francisco directories as a partner in Edouart and Campbell, Washington Street near the Opera House, and an "artist with William Davis." His residence was 516 Bryant Street. In 1862, Campbell opened a gallery of his own at 622 Kearny Street.

Campbell moved his family to Portland in 1862, then commenced a new job as superintendent of the Terramarra Mine, located in northwestern Mexico about 150 miles from Guaymas. (One of the three co-owners of this silver mine, Robert Campbell, was probably related to Hamilton.) On the afternoon of June 12, 1863, Hamilton Campbell was murdered in cold blood by a Mexican laborer. Robbery was the apparent motive, as the killer rifled Campbell's pockets, stealing about fifty dollars and a pistol before disappearing into the mountains. Campbell's body was moved six miles to the village of San Antonio, where it was buried by local American residents. The murderer was reportedly captured and executed a short time afterward.

For Campbell's survivors, his tragic, senseless end had sad echoes in the ensuing years. In December 1864 his son Gustavus shot himself to death while hunting, and less than six months later his six-year-old son Willie died. His widow Harriet was still living in Portland in 1900, still "sprightly" at eighty-three.

Pioneer photographers of the far west: a biographical dictionary, 1840-1865 By Peter E. Palmquist, Thomas R. Kailbourn --pp 146-147

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Feb 15 2017, 2:32:50 UTC