Bill Caldwell: James Campbell was a homegrown millionaire

The Tri-State District had its share of homegrown millionaires, but it also made millions for others who came to the district looking for opportunity. James Campbell was one of those. With wealth gained through land and railroad investments, he turned supposed worn-out properties into producing mines. His legacy is remembered by the parkway that bears his name.

James Campbell was born in Ireland in 1848. In 1850, the family immigrated to the U.S. They lived in Wheeling, West Virginia. Campbell quit regular school at age 11 in 1859 to work for $2 a week as a grocer’s boy. Though regular schooling stopped, he was always curious.

One of his grocery deliveries started him on the path to commercial success. One evening the grocer had him take an important order to troops encamped at Wheeling at the beginning of the Civil War. He delivered the groceries to the camp of General John C. Fremont, known as the Pathfinder. Something about the sharp-eyed boy caught the general’s attention. Then and there, he offered the 13-year-old a job as a messenger at the salary of $15 a month.

However, Fremont assigned him a different duty. He stationed Campbell at the door of his headquarters to keep out people with whom he didn’t want to be bothered. It didn’t take long listening to Fremont and his staff before he learned those the general wanted to avoid. He told of one long-winded commander he successfully kept away from the general. When the man even presented him with a gold-washed sword as a present, he took it and wore it, “but the captain of the ‘Jessie Scouts’ didn’t get in to see the general.”

West to Missouri

When the war ended, Fremont left the army in 1866. Campbell was 18 and went along when Fremont set up his headquarters in New York. Fremont sent Campbell out on a survey crew, starting as a chain man, hauling the measuring chains for the surveyors working on railroad routes. He made it his business to learn all about surveying. Before long, at 25, he was the chief of the civil engineering corps and a civil engineer surveying Missouri lands.

Land speculation was rampant. Campbell had saved his money and used it to buy land, which he promptly sold to immigrants, doubling his savings more than a few times. He eventually accumulated $80,000.

The late 1860s and early 1870s were rife with railroad speculation, too. Counties issued bonds for railroads. Speculation came to a grinding halt in the Panic of 1873. Many counties defaulted. After the panic eased, he left New York for St. Louis. Combining his surveying experiences with his savings, Campbell purchased bonds others thought worthless in areas he thought were ripe for expansion, if he just waited. He used his bonds for collateral for loans to buy more bonds. His optimism was tempered with realistic evaluations as he decided which counties’ bonds to buy.

One extreme example was a set of bonds purchased for $7,000 that yielded $500,000 because he held them until development was ripe. His philosophy was, “I am still holding everything that didn’t make money.” Not everyone had that luxury, but his initial good fortune put him in the enviable position of being able to hold out while others were forced to sell.

Southwest Missouri attracted Campbell’s attention in 1877 when Joplin’s Captain Bartlett suggested he try his hand here. He had just successfully led St. Louis investors to try Montana silver mines. His first property was west of the city on 20th Street. He bought 20 acres at $5 an acre. Royalties returned $56,000. He purchased another 1,200 acres in the southeast portion of the city as well as tracts southeast of Seventh and Illinois. He owned a third of the Rex Mining and Smelting Co. and was president of the Missouri Lead & Zinc Co. with another 200 acres of prime mine land. At his death in 1914, he owned 2,200 acres in the city of Joplin valued at $3 million. That would be $81 million in 2015 dollars.

He had a reputation of being a sharp but honest businessman. His relationship with his employees was cordial at a time when relations between owners and workers were often antagonistic. His mine mills were considered models for the day.

While he made St. Louis his home, he divided his time between St. Louis and Joplin. He built a three-story mansion at 20th and Connecticut, which he named The Elms. The house had its own private railroad spur for his use.

Richest man west of the Mississippi

Through the 1880s and 1890s, he invested in street railroads, steam railroads, electric light plants and gas plants. He worked in the background most of the time. He helped Festus Wade, a former employee in a horse car line and who made money in real estate, found the Mercantile Trust Co., which by 1907 became the largest bank in Missouri. Wade was also a director of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., which was to play a major role in Campbell’s Joplin investments.

Campbell played an important behind-the-scenes role when the Frisco railroad was being separated from the Rock Island line in 1909. He was a major stockholder and officeholder in the Frisco. When the push was made to build a new station for the Frisco in Joplin in 1909, Campbell was influential in getting the financing for the nine-story, station-office building through Wade’s Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. when it was constructed four years later.

By 1910, Campbell’s wealth was estimated to be between $10 million and $40 million. He, his wife and daughter spent their time between homes in St. Louis and Greenwich, Connecticut, both of which were valued at more than $1 million. Mrs. Campbell had a poor opinion of The Elms in Joplin. She nicknamed it “The Shack.” St. Louis newspapers heralded the fact his city tax valuation was $1 million.

He retired from his North American Co. in 1913, leaving it in hands a trained successor. He was still a director of the Frisco railroad in 1914 when he suffered blood poisoning and pneumonia in June while at his home in Connecticut. He died June 12, 1914, at age 66.

Dispersal of his businesses took decades. Jack Frost, of Joplin, first proposed The Elms be purchased as the base for a new golf course the next year. After some fanfare, the deal fell through. Merchantile Trust in St. Louis offered it for sale or lease for several years. Shortly after the golf course proposal failed, E.Z. Wallower, owner of the Keystone Hotel, leased the estate. His family lived there into the 1930s. It sold in 1943 to a Louisiana man, Harry Covy. How long he held the property is unknown.

The estate held the majority of the Campbell properties in Joplin until 1940. A trustee sale was conducted on Oct. 24 on lots south of Seventh to 20th and west of Illinois to Range Line Road. Nearly 1,000 people “jammed and overflowed a building at 621 Main Street where the auction was in progress.” Lots sold for as little as $50 near Range Line to as much as $260 in Eastmorland where building restrictions applied. In all, 480 lots and 208 acres were offered for sale.

That auction still did not complete the dispersal of his holdings. In 1946, the Missouri Lead & Zinc Co. donated 96 acres to the city along Murphy Boulevard south to 20th Street for a park. Real estate agent Rolla Stephens handled the paperwork. The Globe reported much of the land was overgrown as it had not been mined for decades. Ten acres were reserved for a school at 15th and Connecticut and deeded to the board of education. Five years later, Stephens petitioned the park board to rename the east side of Murphy Boulevard, Campbell Parkway, in his honor. At the same session, Stephens proposed the name Dover Hill for the northwest corner of Murphy Boulevard and North Main Street in honor of Joplin composer Percy Weinrich.

Campbell’s assiduous devotion to business inspired his advice to young men in the vein of Horatio Alger. “Industry and application are the prime assets of the young man entering upon the business field. Young men should learn to pull in the same direction with the other fellow but pull harder and more steadily.” Aphorisms as these are what he lived by and what made him at his death the richest man west of the Mississippi.