Respected American politician hailed from south Cavan area
This column looks at Timothy J. Campbell the New York Democrat who hailed from Cavan.
New Yorkers affectionately knew Judge Timothy (Tim) John Campbell as the ‘East Side’s friend’, an upstanding politician in the Democratic tradition. Towards the end of the 19th century, Campbell racked up four terms in the United States House of Representatives.
The former member of Congress first came to the USA as a five year old when his parents emigrated to what was the promised land where dreams of a better life were possible. From this deep-felt hope, the all-pervading positive term ‘American dream’ was born. But the Irish did not always find a welcome and had to work hard to gain a place in American society, and that they did. The Irish have an inbuilt tenacity to succeed. It is not by accident they are celebrated as ‘the fighting Irish’.
Biographical accounts of Campbell give his date of birth as January 8, 1840, and to try and discover more on Tim’s parents I contacted Cavan Genealogy Centre who found a record for ‘Timothy Campbell’ born in Mullahoran (that turned out to be a year earlier, on January 11, 1839) to Thomas Campbell and Ann Donahue Campbell. On his arrival in New York with his mother and father, as a little kid, he was enrolled in a public school and later trained in print production gaining him work in the composing-room of the New York Dispatch, before joining some of the Big Apple’s most eminent newspapers of the day including the New York Times, New York Express, New York Tribune and New York Herald.
In 1865, he threw his hat in the political ring and got involved with the Mozart Hall branch of the Democratic Party, which was under the control of Fernando Wood. Three years on, he became a clerk in the County Clerk’s office and by ‘the Fall’ of that year his popularity helped get him ‘elected to the assembly by the citizens of the Sixth Assembly District’. Over the next seven years he was re-elected and, in 1875, he convincingly defeated two rivals, the Hon. Michael J. Shandley and Louis S. Goebel in a hard-fought battle becoming Judge of the Fifth District Court.
‘In the legislature,’ according to the New York Dispatch on September 18, 1881: ‘Mr Campbell was always to be found on the side of honest measures, and though not an accomplished speaker, never failed to equip himself credibly when occasion required.’
He was described in the same article as a ‘genial and hospitable fellow; full of humour and laughable anecdotes’ with all ‘those happy social qualities that make the popular man’. The well-dispositioned politician stood at a height of five feet eight inches high and was otherwise of a ‘compact build’ with ‘black hair and dark blue eyes’. Still unmarried in 1881, he had a penchant for clams and held well attended ‘chowder parties’ while open to offers of marriage.
Grover Cleveland
It was because of a strange comment he made as a joke, that Tim Campbell was best remembered. After he died a contemporary told the New York Times, ‘Queer, isn’t it, that this man who did so much good and died poor because of his charities will always be remembered by a joke of his that doesn’t put him in the right light, because the joke has been interpreted seriously.’
It was at a time when Campbell was a State Senator, and the future US President Grover Cleveland was still the Governor of New York and ‘a bill had been drafted for the payment of back pay due to the police and the police clerks’. The State Senator endorsed the proposed measure and pressed upon Cleveland to support the bill, but the Governor said he dared not because the matter was ‘unconstitutional’.
Campbell pointed out that the bill had been drawn up by Judge Koch and that the court of appeal could decide the ‘constitutionality of the Bill’. Campbell’s name was immortalised when he retorted, ‘What’s the Constitution between good friends.’ Consequently, Cleveland signed the bill.
Because of Tim, journalists in the US started reporting on Grover Cleveland as a presidential candidate when at a function for legislators in Albany, he proposed ‘a toast’ to Grover Cleveland, the ‘next President’ of the United States. Incidentally, another US President, Roosevelt, was described ‘as an old pal’ of Campbell’s.
Alaskan mines
Campbell invested in Alaskan mines, the New York Times noting he ‘acquired these interests through being counsel for the Tin City Mining Company.’ Primarily, he helped Tin City to establish a post office and managed to get ‘the man he wanted’ for the job of Postmaster.
Tin City is a former mining camp located at Cape Mountain’s base. True to his Cavan roots, Campbell attended the annual Cavan P. & B. Association’s Annual Ball in New York. Friends admired him for his loyalty and, shortly before the death of General Sheridan, Campbell presented a resolution as an offering of sympathy.
Tim and Mrs Campbell had a daughter Margaritta. The Sun newspaper on August 6, 1890, carried a story about the ‘banner club of the sixth assembly district’, otherwise remembered as the so-called ‘Oriental Club’ made up of ‘Celts, Teutons and Hebrews’ who were all united in their admiration of Campbell when they nominated him to Congress.
On April 7, 1904, he succumbed to a bout of pneumonia and died before noon at his home, 14 Columbia Street, New York. Deeply mourned in media reports, they remembered his political career, dating back to 1867 when first he was elected for the state assembly as a Democratic candidate. Tim’s final thoughts were for the nurse who minded him when the end came. The New York Times reported his stirring last words to the nurse, to whom he said, “See here, little girl, you’ve been up all night, tending me like an angel. I’ll know them when I see the real kind. Don’t you worry. I’m real comfortable, and I want you to go and get a little rest. Don’t you bother about old Tim.”
Those were Campbell’s last words.
In 1909, trouble erupted when his widow Mrs T.J.
Campbell asked to have her husband removed from Calvary Cemetery, New York, and re-interred in Greenwood graveyard where she planned to erect a monument.
However, the dead congressman’s sister Margaret Campbell got wind of it, and she went to court to stop the re-interment and ensure that he remained in Catholic ground.
The judge reserved judgement and Tim Campbell remained in Calvary. Further information on Timothy J. Campbell, can be read in the New York Times, April 8, 1904.
READ MORE TIMES PAST