Samuel James Campbell

Campbell's Mount Carroll residence, built in 1925 when he was the vice president of the Carroll County State Bank, is now part of the Mount Carroll Historic District. It was designed by architect Carroll A. Klein. although it was then almost exclusively a girls' preparatory school, Shimer allowed occasional male day students.

Campbell subsequently studied at Beloit College through 1913, and received a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Stanford University in 1914.

Career and civic life

Campbell's "Kable News Co." was listed as distributor of thirty three comic titles during the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency's investigation into a possible connection between comic books and juvenile delinquency.

Campbell was a friend of Holman Pettibone of Chicago, a member of the Eisenhower administration. In 1955 Pettibone arranged to have Campbell invited to a stag dinner at the White House where he met President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was invited again in 1957 for a dinner (indefinitely postponed) to be given in honor of President René Coty of France. Eisenhower, who also had an interest in Angus cattle and who kept two herds at his farm in Gettysburg (now the Eisenhower National Historic Site), kept in contact with Campbell for the rest of the administration.

Campbell was a long-time member of the boards of trustees of both his hometown alma mater Shimer College and nearby Beloit College. His service on the Shimer College board began in 1924, and he held the chairmanship for more than 20 years, from 1935 to 1956. At Beloit, he joined the board in 1938 and chaired it from 1958 to 1963. The Department of Economics at Beloit is also named after him.