CASTLETOWN, OMAGH, COUNTY TYRONE BT78 5QY, NORTHERN IRELAND, TEL +44 (0)28 8224 3292
Campbell House The Campbell House, or Aghalane House to give it its formal title, was built by Hugh Campbell in 1786 on a farm near Plumbridge in County Tyrone.
Above the front door Hugh placed two stone plaques, one bearing his name and the date of construction and the other bearing the arms of the Dukes of Argyle, indicating that the Campbells of Aghalane, who had arrived from Scotland some generations earlier, claimed kinship with their distinguished namesakes, the Campbells of Argyle.
Hugh Campbell emigrated to New York in 1818 aboard the Phoenix. He kept a journal of his voyage which sheds much light not only on his character but also on the nature and organisation of the early nineteenth-century emigrant trade. Hugh became one of Philadelphia's most prominent merchants before eventually going to St Louis, where he entered into partnership with his brother Robert.
Robert Campbell Robert Campbell, who went on to become a fur-trapper and builder of Fort Laramie, was born in this house in 1804. Robert emigrated to America in the early 1820s to join his older brother Hugh, who had emigrated in 1818. Robert moved west for health reasons and soon became involved in the fur trade. By 1836 Robert left his active life in the mountains and settled in St Louis, where he continued to supply expeditions of trappers and pioneer settlers as they set out on the Oregon Trail.
In the course of his long career, Robert was a trapper, storekeeper, bank president, honorary colonel in the United States Army and an Native American Commissioner. In the latter capacity he helped to draw up the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie with all the Native American tribes east of the Rocky Mountains, south of the Missouri River and north of Texas and New Mexico.
His home in Lucas Place in St Louis, Missouri has now been preserved, and is now known as the (External) Campbell House Museum
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Channel 9 clips
Scroll down the page to the Season Two Archives to find two clips on "Campbell house" restoration and "Virginia Campbell".
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