The Campbells were pioneers in McCook, Nebraska

Harry A. Campbell (1882–1907) was the oldest of three and the only son of Thomas B. Campbell and Ella Maud Alter Campbell.  The family came to Nebraska from Parnassus, Pennsylvania, when Harry was an infant.  His father worked for the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad and followed the line as it was built across Nebraska to the newly platted McCook, NE.  The family settled there and Thomas became the town's first railway dispatcher.  The symbiotic relationship between the railroad and towns like McCook played an integral role in homesteading in the prairie states, and in developing America's bread basket.^▼4

Harry

Harry worked as a clerk and stocker at the Eller grocery store in McCook as a young man.  The Campbell family lived then at 506 Monmouth St. (later named 4th St, whether east or west 4th is not known.).  In August of 1900 he enrolled in the normal school at Franklin Academy in Franklin, Nebraska but his time there was short lived and in early 1901 he moved to Pittsburgh to study electrical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, then later that year relocated to Chicago.  In his obituary his family reported that he worked for express companies, but I found no evidence of it.  I have another idea, though, about a lunch room; see right.  He returned to Nebraska in May, 1905 to recuperate from illness and attend his sister Lillie's high school graduation.  Lillie read an essay about gossip and performed a selection from Scherzo Brilliante in a piano duet.

Harry stayed on and went to work in Nebraska, possibly in recognition that his health problems made it advisable to remain near family. In mid 1906 he worked as a ticket seller for the railroad and a few months later was promoted to office clerk in the superintendent's office.

Though described as ill for a couple years before death, he was bedfast for only one day and died in his sleep.  Cardiovascular disease or diabetic ketoacidosis coma are common fatal symptoms of diabetes that may have contributed to his death.

Lunch room in Real Estate Board building?

There were several Harry Campbells listed in 1901-3 Chicago city directories, including more than one Harry A. Campbell.^▼5. As city directories then included both the work and home address, I tried to learn if there was an express company connected to any of the Harry's work addresses, but found none. What I found instead is interesting. A Harry A. Campbell worked in an unknown capacity in a lunch room in the Real Estate Board building adjacent to the Iroquois Theater, at 57-1/2 Dearborn.  That made it the first warm haven for performers and audience members who escaped from the northwest corner of the theater.  Performers fled from the west exit and audience members from multiple exits on the north.  It is unlikely that Harry actually entered the burning theater or even Couch Place alley but, given his poor health, he might have been left breathless by the exertion of lifting victims or moving chairs and tables to accommodate them in the lunchroom.

Discrepancies and addendum

1. The thirty-two-bed Samaritan Hospital was a free emergency facility managed by Dr. L. Blake Baldwin that served Chicago's river district.  It was located in a large frame house at 481 Wabash at the corner of E. 9th St. (as of 1913; in 1903 it was named Eldridge/Eldridge Court/Place) from June 1900 to 1905.  The Samaritan was capitalized with $1,000 and incorporated by E. C. Lindley, E. C. Wetten, and E.C. Maher, and staffed by nine nurses, surgeon Dr. Z. J. Little, pharmacist K. M. Kline, and two matrons, with a rotating staff of twenty Chicago physicians.  It's treatment of Iroquois victims brought recognition in the form of $400 badly needed donations.  At the time of the Iroquois Theater fire, the facility was around $2,000 in debt ($70k adjusted for inflation).   Contributors included Marshall Field department store and the family of Iroquois survivors Florence Mueller and her daughters.  The Inter Ocean newspaper described Samaritan as a square and dingy structure while commending society women from coming to its aid.  They sent their cars and drivers to run errands and some even spent time at the hospital making lists of the injured and talking with people who came looking for loved ones and seeking news about patients.  One contributor of auto services was Henry Ullman.  A few years later the site became the St. Vincent de Paul Home for Boys.

2. The baby was not related to Harry Campbell.

3. Superstition in the early 1900s led people to believe that overloads of emotion could cause illness, even death.  Extreme surprise, fear, love, grief, horror, worry, or excitement were viewed as titillatingly dangerous. What today is known as acute stress disorder or PTSD was years away from common recognition.  The concept that psychological trauma was a pathology that could have long-lasting effects had been suggested only eighteen years earlier by Paris doctor Jean Martin Charcot in 1887.

4. Read Walt Sehnert's 2005 article from the McCook Gazette.  It provides an interesting description of McCook, Nebraska when the railroad was in it's heyday there..

5. I failed to learn Harry's middle name.  It may have been his mother's maiden name, Alter.

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