HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 1983-09-28, Page 73Whitney
-Rabe
y . y
Funeral Home -
Cemetery Monuments
and Inscriptions
ROSS W. RIBEY — FUNERAL DIRECTOR
87 Goderich St. West, Seaforth 527-1399#
Belle Campbell is
town's historian
Editor's Note: This profile of Belle Campbell appeared
in the Nov 1981 issue of Village Squire magazine. Miss
Campbell, who now lives at Huronview, neat Clinton,
retains her interest in local history.
BY SUSAN WHITE
Belle Campbell is 85 and she doesn't drive anymore.
When a volunteer front' the Van Egmond house, a
historic site south of her home in Seaforth offered her a
ride to the big Ciderfest event there, the lady joked "or we
could send up a horse anti wagon.'.' (Horse and wagon
tides for the kiddies are a popular feature at Ciderfest.)
It's typical of the spunky historian that she replied,
"Well, now 1 haven't had a. wagon ride for years" and
Belle Campbell went to Ciderfest in'style, sitting up front
in Bill Leeming's rig.
Its that sort of spirit and spunk that's propelled Miss
Campbell through more than fifty years of research into
everyone and everything that's ever happened in Seaforth,
Tuckersmith and Hibbert Townships. She's still at it.
Everyone in Seaforth knows the historian can put her
fnger on just about any long lost bit of information. (She
has school notebooks full of information on residents since
the area was settled, street by street in the town,
concession by concession in the townships. And they are
up to date.)
The author of six books on local history, published by
the Huron Expositor in Seaforth, Belle Campbell is
virtually self-taught. She had brain fever as a child in
Hibbert and that kept her from school until she was
seven..."they didn't think I was going to live, but I'm still
here."
Then a doctor advised her parents she was too frail to
take the high school entrance and continue on in school. ''I
passed it and wrote him, 'see, I'm not sick—. But high
school would have meant boarding in Seaforth for the
winter and that just wasn't possible. Miss Campbell, an
only child, moved to town with her parents in 1918. A
business course in Stratford and some studies by
correspondence followed. Then she worked in Beattie's
store and for CN Express agent Mac McKellar. But
sickness at home was a problem and she nursed her
ggrrandmother, father and then her mother, who died m
1969 aged nearly 99. And worked on her histories.
Her grandmother "kept after me until 1 wrote down the
stories...where our people came from." That led to a
family tree spanning six or seven generations and it's now
in the Huron archives. The historian has been sorting
through all her papers recently, donating what she doesn't
use regularly to that institution, the geneological society,
the Van Egmond House and the Huron County Museum.
Children are more interested in their roots now days and
that pleases Belle Campbell. They ask their parents, who
don't know the answers and often consult her. Start now,
she tells would-be researchers and try to learn about the
people behind the names and numbers. "When I think
about what those people (the early settlers) faced when
they came here...
"1 forget about my age a lot of the time," Belle
Campbell says and her face lights up as she describes
helping two recently -reunited brothers find an ancestor's
grave at Maitlandbank Cemetery in McKillop Township.
They were so pleased."
And that's what Belle Campbell's sort of history is all
about.
VAN EGMOND CONNECTION—Artists have been attract-
ed to Seaforth and Egmondville due mainly to the unique
architecture in residential areas. Jennifer Shanks,
Uxbridge and Elizabeth Berry, recently spent a weekend in
Seaforth, painting this old house at the corner of Ann and
James Sts. Mrs. Berry, a Van Egmond descendant, says
her great-grandfather, a Jackson, married a Van Egmond
and ono,of his sons lived in the house. The property made
headlines this summer when owner Leo Medd planned to
construct a new home on the property and demolish the
existing structure. "We think the house is one of the most
interesting pieces of architecture in Seaforth," says Mrs.
Berry.