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The object of his attention is his newborn daughter
who came into the world in a birthing room that looks
more like a hotel suite than a delivery room.
The new mother strolls the hallway just hours after
giving birth, as pain-free as modern medicine is capable
of making it. Although they are unaware of it, the hospital
experience for the new parents is in part the culmination
of the dream and vision of one man, Dr. William Murphy
Campbell.
Dr. Campbell was 98 years old when he died on
March 8, 1958, as the oldest active physician in the state.
During those 98 years, the country fought four wars and
a police action in Korea. Those same years saw the prac-
tice of medicine change dramatically; and no one was
more pleased with the progress than Dr. Campbell. He
was a philanthropist, a visionary and a physician in the
true sense of the word. His goal was to heal and his ideal
world was that both men and women would be free from
pain. He felt strongly that childbirth should be as pain-
free as possible, often standing between a young woman
in childbirth and her mother who said the pangs of labor
are meant to be suffered and endured.
Eventually, Dr. Campbell became a highly sought-after
speaker in the medical world who traveled around the
globe to address other physicians.
But, young Campbell’s arrival in Parker County was
without fanfare. A team of oxen pulled a wagon laden
with household goods and a family newly arrived in the
county in April of 1862. It had been a long, slow jour-
ney over rutted trails from Shelby County. As the wagon
reached the rise near Spring Creek, Frances O’Bryan
Campbell looked across the rolling hills to their destina-
tion, an area between Spring Creek and Sanchez Creek
called Smith Valley. Her 4-year-old son William pointed
to smoke in the distance. Frances’s mind turned to
thoughts of Indian raids. Her fears quickly subsided at the
sight of her husband, William Carter Campbell, a former
Indian scout and ranger, who had a well-deserved reputa-
tion as a crack shot with a rifle.
In Smith Valley, they built their log home. On the
west side of Spring Creek lived James Bedford’s family,
Dr. Campbell said years later. He was called the “Iron
Jacket Preacher.” About one-half mile west of (Tin Top
community) was a double-log house occupied by an
African-American family. Far down in the valley near the
river was a single hut, which had been occupied by the
Berry family; but, the Indians scalped Mr. Berry, a man of
British descent, Campbell recalled years later. On the east
side of Spring Creek lived Ben Irby, and up on the east
side of the mountain lived the Wilsons. Up the creek a
little way were the Seelys and the Shaws.
The War Between the States was underway and
William Carter Campbell joined the Confederate Army,
leaving behind his wife and family, including young
William. During the long years of the war, there were but
seven families living in the area of Smith Valley and the
Spring Creek community.
All the men were gone into Confederate service
except three or four older men, Dr. Campbell said. It was
during the war years that Indians stole two of the Wilson
children. (They were later returned to their families.) The
pioneers struggled through that time period and were
aided by what Dr. Campbell considered their best asset
— loyalty.
“The Bible recalls the loyalty of David and Jonathan.
But my heart swells with emotion when I think of the
loyalty of six young women to my mother with three
small children,” Dr. Campbell wrote years later. “For
three long years while my father was in the war, these
young women never allowed my mother to spend a night
alone: Polly Staggs, whose husband died in the war, lived
to the west; the four Wilson girls lived to the east; and
more than a mile to the north lived Sis Shaw.”
At the age of 7 or 8 (stories differ), William was
deemed strong enough and old enough to lead a team of
oxen pulling a plow. It was a necessity. The war had seen
other tangible property stolen from the Campbell family;
the land was all that was left. It was long, hot, slow work
in a field where the tough red clay could be a foot deep,
but then gave way to rich loam. A year later, at the age of
9, William picked the first acre of cotton planted south of
Weatherford. Later, when the urge to buy a store-bought
hat struck him, William shucked 150 bushels of corn for
a neighbor to earn the money to finance his purchase.
It was an age when diphtheria, typhoid and malaria
caused epidemics across the country; a time when
women struggled to give birth in isolated cabins and
considered themselves blessed if both they and their child
survived. William’s mother gave birth to 10 children —
at least that is the total of the ones who survived birth.
Her struggles sparked a need in William to alleviate the
pain and suffering endured in order to bring a new life
into the world. At the age of 18, he bought his first medi-
cal book; at 19 he began teaching school to earn money
for college. But the illiteracy of the time appalled him,
impeding progress, he said, and his own title of teacher
impressed him not.
If anyone came into the community who could
read McDuffy’s Reader and could decipher a little and
pronounce the words in the Blue Book Speller, he was
the schoolmaster, Dr. Campbell said.
Campbell graduated at 22 from Add-Ran College,
the forerunner of Texas Christian University. Returning
to teaching, he earned enough money to get his medi-
cal degree through Vanderbilt Medical College. He then
returned to Parker County and began a medical career
that spanned more than 68 years. As a family practitioner,
he fought the diseases of the times while struggling to find
ways to alleviate pain.
In 1948, when Dr. Campbell was addressing a
crowd and discussing his and other families’ early years
in Parker County, it wasn’t the war or Indian raids, nor
the lack of roads and transportation that was a pioneer’s
greatest enemy. According to Dr. Campbell, the most
murderous enemy was the mosquito.
Hundreds of acres were in lakes and ponds, Dr.
Campbell said. They bred unnumbered malarial mosqui-
toes. No defense. No screens. No quinine. Thanks to