The leading family among these Holston Virginians was that of the Campbells, who lived near Abingdon.  They were frontier farmers, who chopped down the forest and tilled the soil with their own hands.  They used the axe and guided the plow as skilfully as they handled their rifles; they were also mighty hunters, and accustomed from boyhood to Indian warfare.  The children received the best schooling the back country could afford, for they were a book-loving race, fond of reading and study as well as of out-door sports.  The two chief members were cousins, Arthur and William.  Arthur was captured by the northern Indians when sixteen, and was kept a prisoner among them several years; when Lord Dunmore’s war broke out he made his escape, and acted as scout to the Earl’s army.  He served as militia colonel in different Indian campaigns, and was for thirty years a magistrate of the county; he was a man of fine presence, but of jealous, ambitious, overbearing temper.  He combined with his fondness for Indian and hunter life a strong taste for books, and gradually collected a large library.  So keen were the jealousies, bred of ambition, between himself and his cousin William Campbell, they being the two ranking officers of the local forces, that they finally agreed to go alternately on the different military expeditions; and thus it happened that Arthur missed the battle of King’s Mountain, though he was at the time County Lieutenant.

William Campbell stood next in rank.  He was a man of giant strength, standing six feet two inches in height, and straight as a spear-shaft, with fair complexion, red hair, and piercing, light blue eyes.  A firm friend and staunch patriot, a tender and loving husband and father, gentle and courteous in ordinary intercourse with his fellows, he was, nevertheless, if angered, subject to fits of raging wrath that impelled him to any deed of violence. [Footnote:  Campbell MSS.  Notes, by Gov.  David Campbell.] He was a true type of the Roundheads of the frontier, the earnest, eager men who pushed the border ever farther westward across the continent.  He followed Indians and tories with relentless and undying hatred; for the long list of backwoods virtues did not include pity for either public or private foes.  The tories threatened his life and the lives of his friends and families; they were hand in glove with the outlaws who infested the borders, the murderers, horse-thieves, and passers of counterfeit money.  He hunted them down with a furious zest, and did his work with merciless thoroughness, firm in the belief that he thus best served the Lord and the nation.  One or two of his deeds illustrate admirably the grimness of the times, and the harsh contrast between the kindly relations of the border folks with their friends, and their ferocity towards their foes.  They show how the better backwoodsmen, the upright, church-going men, who loved their families, did justice to their neighbors, and sincerely tried to serve God, not only waged an unceasing war on the red and white foes of the State and of order, but carried it on with a certain ruthlessness that indicated less a disbelief in, than an utter lack of knowledge of, such a virtue as leniency to enemies.