Shenandoah Martyr: Richard Campbell at War

The Battle of Eutaw Springs, by F.C. Yohn.

Reviving the memory of a Revolutionary War hero from Woodstock, Virginia.

There is no dignity in being forgotten. A case in point is Virginia Lt. Col. Richard Campbell, a Continental officer who died bravely for his country but lies today in an unmarked grave far from his home. “Killed near the end of the battle at Eutaw Springs,” wrote the authors of a 2017 study of that battle, “he is virtually unknown today.” In his own day, however, Nathanael Greene called him a “brave, active, and intrepid Soldier.” Light Horse Harry said he was an “excellent officer” who was “highly respected and beloved.” In 1832 one of his soldiers still remembered him as “the brave Col. Campbell.” Dick Campbell, as he was known, deserves to be remembered.

Little is known of his early life. Historian Louise Phelps Kellogg asserted a century ago that he was “a distant relative of the Campbell family of southwest Virginia.” This would tie him to militia Gen. William Campbell, a leader at the Battle of King’s Mountain. He was evidently born in Virginia about 1730 and raised in Dunmore (now Shenandoah) County, where he was appointed a sheriff’s deputy in 1772 and reappointed in 1774. The Shenandoah Valley was culturally distinct from the eastern parts of Virginia. Many of Campbell’s neighbors were Germans who had migrated from Pennsylvania.

As war approached, he joined the First Independent Company of Dunmore. News of the Virginia Powder Alarm sent the company parading out of the county seat at Woodstock toward Williamsburg. When word of a peaceful settlement arrived they returned and held a barbeque. In November 1775, Campbell was tasked with conducting a census of his part of the county, reporting for his own household ten white and two black residents. Notably, his was the only household out of seventy-six that reported black, likely enslaved, members.

Richard Campbell's signature from a January, 1777 letter.

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