Basil Campbell ex slave to James G Campbell both familys

Surname/tag: free slave

This page has been accessed 30 times.

The goal of this project is to ...possibly give someone their family history that may have been lost and to be sure that Basil gets credit for something he did that was very unusual.

Right now this project just has one member, me. I am Christine Zentner.

Here are some of the tasks that I think need to be done. I'll be working on them, and could use your help

I am going to use the biography of him I found in an old history book
I will find his descendants and hopefully some ancestors because I know several of his owners so I need to trace them

Then I will contact the living if I have done good enough

Will you join me? Please post a comment here on this page, in G2G using the project tag, or send me a private message. Thanks!

Memories: 1

Enter a personal reminiscence or story.

Christine Zentner

I have a book published in 1891 The history of Northern California (Memorial and Biographical History) Chicago; Lewis Publishing Company 1891. It is full of biographies of ordinary people. It also has amazing lithographs of people. It has no Native Americans except the stories of conflicts and domination, and there are only two "colored"(not my word)in the book. The first is Basil Campbell. I looked and did not find him in the wikitree and ancestry only has documents but he is not in a tree. I have several of his owners and then I have his life after emancipation. The unusual thing he did was to honor a contract he made with his owner even though it was void because they moved him to California. He had saved money and invested enough to have a good life, got married and lived past 80 years. I think it is a great story and I hope his family knows all about it. However this is not always the case with African descendants of slaves. Just because Basil was a success doesn't mean his offspring were that fortunate and things get lost. Perhaps Basil didn't have the records that are in this book. Sound like a good thing to do.

posted 23 Aug 2020 by Christine Zentner [thank Christine]