John Campbell

John Campbell (1766-1840) was one of Scotland’s most notable missionaries in the early years of the nineteenth century. He was born in Edinburgh and became active in evangelistic efforts while working as a hardware merchant; he organized several Sunday schools in Edinburgh in the late 1780s and early 1790s. He began his ministry as a Congregationalist, working with James Haldane and others in forming an itinerant preaching society across Scotland. In the late 1790s he became director of the Scottish branch of the London Missionary Society. He was involved with bringing 24 children from Sierra Leone to Scotland to receive an education, but due to certain difficulties, the children were educated at Battersea, London, with Joseph Hughes superintending the work and John Foster serving as a tutor. Campbell removed to Hackney in 1804 to begin his ministry at the Independent Chapel, Kingsland Road. For a time he served as editor of the Youth’s Magazine. In June 1812 he was sent by the London Missionary Society to tour portions of South Africa on behalf of the Society, returning in 1814 and publishing Travels in South Africa, Undertaken at the Request of the Missionary Society (1815). He made a second tour of the same region between 1818 and 1821. He was also the founder of the Tract Society of Scotland. See Robert Philip, The Life, Times and Missionary Enterprises of the Rev. John Campbell (London: Snow, 1841); William Robinson, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Hackney, in the County of Middlesex. 2 vols. (London: John Bowyer Nichols and Son, W. Pickering, and Caleb Turner, 1842-1843) 2:252-254.