William H. Campbell was born in Marion County, Indiana, November 4, 1840. His father dying early, his mother brought up the family, having moved in 1853 to Guthrie County. He enlisted in the first call for volunteers for the Civil War and was a captain in the 4th Iowa Infantry. He next entered Wesleyan University at Mount Pleasant and graduated in 1870, then taking up the law as a profession, the same year he was elected to the Thirteenth General Assembly. He practiced law for ten years in St. Joseph, Missouri. In 1878 he married Nellie E. Ambler in Mount Pleasant where he practiced law for five years before moving to Pueblo, Colorado, because of Mrs. Campbell's health. Mrs. Campbell passed away and soon after he was an ’89er and made a run at the original opening to settlement of Oklahoma, April 22, 1889, and took a homestead near Orlando. He was elected to the first Oklahoma territorial legislature in 1890. He served on the committee that located the Agricultural and Mechanical college at Stillwater and later served on the board of regents. Mr. Campbell’s first wife was Penelope Ambler, a professor of Latin at Mount Pleasant. His second wife was Dr. Bertha M. Hastings, who for many years practiced medicine in the Orlando region.