Who Counts?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Thomas Campbell the patriarch of the Campbell Family, had a total of 7 children: Alexander, the oldest and most well-known, Dorothea, Nancy, Jane, Thomas, Archibald, and Alicia.

The Campbells challenged the religious status quo and were somewhat progressive in their theology, as well as social and political leanings. Yet, in the 1800s they, like so many, deferred to sons and the male gender. Women’s and girl’s lives were lived in the background. They didn’t count much. Of course, Alexander, the oldest, was the “Golden Boy” who had tremendous influence on frontier religion, and, along with his father, began a restoration movement that would become the Stone-Campbell movement of the Disciples of Christ, Churches of Christ, and Independent Christian Churches. This movement would have a profound impact on American, if not global, Christianity.

Of Thomas and Jane’s, daughters, Dorothea, Nancy, and Jane, we know little … mostly whom they married and how long they lived. Of Jane, we know a little more. She married Matthew McKeever, and, together, they established Pleasant Hill Female Seminary that mirrored the curriculum of Alexander’s Bethany College but was for women’s education. Unlike her brother, Alexander, who was a bit wishy-washy on the slavery issue, Jane and her husband were staunch abolitionists and ran a station of the Underground Railroad outside Bethany, WV!

Archibald Campbell was the youngest son. He gained a reputation as a fine medical doctor and father of Archibald Campbell Jr. who was a lawyer, journalist and abolitionist. Archibald Jr. purchased and published the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer through which he influenced many and was the most influential advocate to President Lincoln on statehood for the NW area of Virginia. West Virginia became a state in 1863.

So, of all of Thomas and Jane’s children, we only know that they had small pox (Jane), whom they married, when they were born and died and what some of them were famous for. But what about Thomas Jr. Did he count? Thomas is given his birthdate in a footnote, May 1, 1802. We don’t know if he married, when he died or where he is buried. On the gravestone of his father, Thomas Campbell, only the names of Alexander and Archibald are carved. The women? Of course not. But why not Thomas? Thomas was excluded – not even claimed as a son on his father’s gravestone, and we can only surmise why. 

In Dr. Robert Richardson’s biography of Campbell, he wrote the only words we have about Thomas Jr. He wrote: “Thomas, a boy of over six years, of an extremely active and restless temperament . . .” Today, we might call it Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). While we know very little about Thomas Jr., we do know that those whose behavior did not conform to the Puritan standards of the time were an embarrassment to their parents. Earlier doctors said such children had an “abnormal defect of moral control” or a “disease of attention.”

Today, society, is more accepting and understanding of those with special needs. Even a wonderful Christian family like that of the Campbell’s was not immune from those in the past who were not so accepting. Today, I hope, we are a bit more accepting and caring. We strive to “welcome all . . . and exclude, none.” Everyone “counts” in God’s Kingdom.

Rev. Kevin K. Adams

References: The Memoirs of Alexander Campbell by Robert Richardson and The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement