Dr. J. H. Campbell was born February 10, 1807 in McIntosh County, Georgia. 
His father, Jesse Campbell , belonged by descent to the Scottish clan of that 
name.  His mother was the daughter of John Dunham, who with his wife, Sara 
Clancy, came to this country as an emigrant in the same ship with General 
Oglethorpe.  Mr. Campbell was fortunate in being educated until his eighteenth 
year chiefly at Sundury, Liberty County, and for a few months attended school at 
Athens.  His attendance was cut short by the death of his father in 1825, which 
necessitated his return to the old  homestead on the coast for the protection 
and support of  his three orphan sisters, he being the only surviving son.  
Though but eighteen years of age, he administered his father's estate, and 
occupied for three years the position of head of the family.  He was converted 
when sixteen years of age and baptized at Sunbury, Liberty County, November 1822 
by Rev. C. O. Screven.  Prior to his conversion he was wild and in the habit of 
using profane language but immediately discontinued all bad habits and began to 
conduct family worship and before he reached his seventeenth year he began to 
exhort and pray in public and in this way became known as "The Boy Preacher" in 
the coast counties of Georgia.

He was ordained at Sunbury in 1830 and became pastor of the church at Macon in 
1831 for one year. He then went to Clinton, Jones County and preached in the 
village and the surrounding country. Under his preaching many were converted.  
He finally entered the work for an evangelist for the state at large and was 
eminently successful in this labor. At the beginning of the civil war in 1861 
he promptly relinquished his work and entered the army as a volunteer Evangelist, 
in which capacity he served until the war closed.  The five or six yeas which 
succeeded the war he spent at Quitman and Thomasville preaching the Gospel.  He 
then took charge of the church at Perry, Houston County, but in 1876 moved to 
Columbus where he resided with his son, Rev. A. B. Campbell.  He was on the first 
Board of Trustees of Mercer University, and continued on that Board for more than 
thirty years.  He removed to Lumpkin and while residing there originated the 
Masonic Female College in that place, and the Baptist Female College at Cuthbert.  
He is the author of the only published history of our denomination in the State 
up to that time.  His influence has been widely felt in the territory composing 
the Bethel Association.  He was a devout preacher and did much towards the  
upbuilding of the Baptist faith in this state.  The writer is unable to give the 
place and date of his death.

(page 273-274)