John Campbell (Westmoreland politician)

John Campbell (1774-1827) was a Virginia planter, lawyer and judge who as a politician represented Westmoreland County in both houses of the Virginia General Assembly. His former home near Hague which he renamed "Kirnan" after his family's ancestral estate in Scotland, was admitted to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019^[1]

His father, Rev. Archibald MacIver Campbell, had emigrated from Scotland and served as rector of several parishes in Virginia's Northern Neck, including at Round Hill in King George County and Oak Grove in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His father had no surviving children from his first wife, whose gravestone is now the only marker of the former Round Hill church. He remarried to Hannah McCoy, daughter of the rector of North Farnham parish and whose mother descended from the prominent Fitzhugh family. This man had two brothers, Archibald Campbell and Alexander Campbell, and was baptised by his father shortly before Rev. Campbell's death. The sons of his eldest brother Archibald, Frederick and Ferdinand, successively inherited a title and lands in Scotland, but as a condition of that inheritance changed their surname to Stewart. His brother Alexander Campbell also became a prominent lawyer, and married his cousin Lucy Fitzhugh of King George County, who survived him and later married Rev. Kollock (who served at various parishes in Princeton, New York, Charleston and Savannah) and whose only daughter Mary, eventually married future Supreme Court justice James M. Wayne.^[2]

After reading law, Campbell began a legal practice in the Northern Neck of Virginia, including serving at least some of the time as Commonwealth's attorney (prosecutor).^[3]

Like his father and both grandfathers, John Campbell was also a planter who farmed using enslaved labor. In the 1810 census, John Campbell owned 36 slaves in Westmoreland County.^[4] A decade later, Campbell owned 11 slaves in Westmoreland County.^[5]

Westmoreland County voters first elected Campbell as one of their representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1803, and he won re-election twice, serving several terms alongside veteran Stephen Bailey until 1806, when Baldwin Lee succeeded him.^[6] Campbell succeeded Revolutionary War veteran George Garner (d.1809), who was also a local justice of the peace and whose family estate (then called "China Hall") Campbell would purchase in 1822 and make his home.^[7] After John Hungerford won election to the U.S. House of Representatives, Campbell ran for Hungerford's former seat in the Virginia Senate, and won re-election, thus representing Westmoreland and adjacent King George and Stafford counties until 1817, when John Hooe of King George county succeeded to the seat.^[8] Virginia legislators elected Campbell as a judge, and he adjudicated cases in the Northern Neck area until his death.^[9]

A cradle Episcopalian, Campbell was also active in his church, despite its decline following its disestablishment by the Virginia General Assembly and ratification of that law by Virginia's highest court (then known as the Court of Appeals). After Campbell bought Kirnan in 1822, he was active in Cople parish. Although health problems of Virginia's bishop James Madison (also president of the College of William and Mary) also complicated Virginia Episcopalians' involvement in the national Episcopal Church, Campbell and Cople parish's rector attended the 1822 General Convention of the Episcopal Church.^[10]

Campbell married twice. His first wife gave birth to one daughter before her death. On December 7, 1808, Campbell married Eliza Fergusen Murphy, who survived her husband by more than a decade. They had at least one son (another Archibald Campbell) and at least 5 daughters before his death.^[11][12]

In 1814 Campbell wrote a will in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (where his uncle or cousin Ferdinand lived), and whom Campbell named as a guardian for his son Archibald should that become necessary because of a dangerous voyage he was then undertaking. Westmoreland County, Virginia later admitted that will to probate. The will acknowledged his second wife's dower interest, as well as made various bequests to his daughters and grandchildren, released debts of his brother and another man, then bequeathed most of his property (including slaves) to his son Archibald.^[13] Campbell died in 1827, and his widow remained at the house he had renamed Kirnan until her death in 1839. Several years later Campbell's five daughters (as surviving heirs) sold the property, which remained in the hands of the Bowie and Taylor families until 2011, when it was purchased and restored by a lawyer and tech executive, who also secured its placement on the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.^[14]