Fourth Son

Hugh Cameron Campbell, the only son of David and Clara White Campbell, was born in Syracuse, N.Y. in 1918. On or around 1922, the family moved to the farm at Warners, and Hugh spent his younger years there. He attended Warners High School from grade one through twelve. Warners High was a relatively small school. Graduating classes ranged from five to as high as twelve students. He went on to Farmingdale Agricultural and Technical school, a two year college on Long Island and studied horticulture and landscaping.

He was active in school sports and was a very good basketball player. He has many close friends that he first met in Warners. One was Jim Harrington, a neighbor, and an assistant in devilish doings during the high school years. In his teen years, he did work on the farm and headed a landscape crew for his father. Jim Harrington was one of the workers on that crew.

His mother was a member of the Warners school board and also had a small business. She made toy dolls from yarn and these were in great demand as Christmas gifts. They were distributed under the name – Clara White Toys. As noted, she was a resident of Skaneateles and a daughter of the Methodist minister there.  She had a sister, Margaret, and a brother, Harold. Margaret graduated from Youngstown University in Youngstown, Pennsylvania and was a life time teacher, mostly in Hempstead, Long Island, where she shared a home with her life-time friend and former college roommate, Agnes Caldwell. In 1961, they retired to DeBary, Florida where they lived until their respective deaths. 

After Farmingdale, and back on the farm, Hugh did nursery work and oversaw the family cow, Bossy. There were no milkmen that delivered in the rural areas. So Hugh milked the cow and fed the cow which required cutting and storing hay. With all of this, Hugh slowly moved from landscaping to farming on a full-time basis. There were peas to be grown and taken to the pea vinery in Warners. There was wheat to be planted and raised.

One of his farming duties was to take the cut grain to be milled.  The Mercer Milling Company in Baldwinsville, owned by Gardner Mercer, was six miles north of Warners and so Hugh met the mill's owner. He was invited to use his canoe at the Mercer summer home on Seneca River and that was how he met Jeanette Mercer, his wife-to-be. On June 3, 1941, Hugh Campbell and Jeanette Mercer were married at a wedding held on the lawn of the Mercer's home on Downer Street in Baldwinsville. Jeanette's parents were Gardner and Irene Mercer. Jeanette had three brothers, Gardner, Robert and Wilson. Only Wilson remains, living in Arizona.

 Initially, the newlyweds lived at the farm. The cow herd was expanded to six and a milk storage room was built. The farm had two barns adjacent to each other and with Gardner's help, additional floors were added and there was a movement to chicken farming also. But the farming venture did not last.   Hugh did farming part time and both worked at the mill in Solvay, a small city, adjacent to Syracuse.

At some point during the mid-forties, Hugh went to work for GLF (Government League of Farmers), and predecessor to Agway) at its Egg Division in Savannah, N.Y. In May 25 of 1943, Robert James was born. And three years later, on May 28, 1946, brother Edward John arrived. In 1948, Hugh was transferred to the GLF operation in Greene, N.Y., in the lower western Catskills. It was time for the family to move. The farm was sold and the parent s went to stay with his brother Carlyle in Syracuse. In 1949, his father died. But their daughter, Barbara Jeanne Campbell entered the family in December of that year. Then his mother passed away one year later.

From that point on, the family moved somewhat frequently as Hugh's job required.  First to Eden, N.Y. next, to Ithaca, then to Clifton Springs and to Norwood, north of Potsdam in northern New York.  During the years from 1949 until the Norwood stay, Hugh and Jeanette were always involved with their children's activities, both in and out of school. Hugh, at one point, led a group of Boy Scouts on a canoe trip in Canada.

Hugh spent his entire career with GLF and Agway, retiring in 1983, and they moved to DeBary, Florida to the home that had been willed to them by his aunt Margaret.  Always active, Hugh spent part of retirement on the lawn and plants at their new home. And not content to stay just in Florida, there were numerous trips with their motor homes (at least two and maybe three), across and around the United States. There were at least two such trips to Alaska and one of those even included going to the north shore of Alaska. But within the past four years, they moved from Florida to an assisted living facility In Clifton Spring to be near their family. Hugh has just turned 90 and Jeanette will be 89 shortly.

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