Library Home  Special Collections Home  Manuscripts Home

Manuscript Collection 1392
 

• Information about Booth Campbell
• Information about the Collection
• Contents of the Collection

Booth Campbell was a native of Cane Hill, Washington County, Arkansas, the son of a Confederate veteran. His mother was the daughter of W. B. Welch, a Fayetteville physician. He worked at various occupations in the western United States before returning to the Ozarks, where he was "discovered" by May Kennedy McCord, a columnist from Springfield, Missouri.

Campbell was one of the earliest participants in the Ozark Folk Festival; he also performed as a singer and banjo player at other festivals in the Ozarks and elsewhere.  He died May 24, 1956, at the age of 84.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE COLLECTION

Robert Cochran, professor of English at the University of Arkansas, donated this Booth Campbell scrapbook to the University Libraries in January 1999.

Processed by Ethel C. Simpson, Special Collections Division, University of Arkansas Libraries,
Fayetteville, Arkansas, in January 1999.

The scrapbook is a loose leaf binder containing the following:

A letter from Campbell to "Dear Rose" n.d.

Typescript, Verses by Booth Campbell, 5 p.

"I'm a Good Old Rebel, Words of an old Negro Slave ...written in 1863"

"Makin' Mountain Music," article about Campbell by Harriett Friedman. Typed copy. 3 p.

"Booth Campbell--Hillbilly Minstrel," article by F. A. Behymer, staff correspondent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Typed copy, 3 p.

"Arkansas' Ballad Champion,"  article by Robert Schick. Typed copy. 3 p.

"Obituary notices for William H. Campbell (1889) and Thomas J. Campbell (1912), grandfather and father, respectively, of Booth Campbell.

Laid in are two pages cut from Rayburn's Ozark Guide bearing photographs of Campbell with his homemade banjo.