Campbell, Jacob Miller

CAMPBELL, Jacob Miller, a Representative from Pennsylvania; born at “White Horse,” near Somerset, Allegheny Township, Somerset County, Pa., November 20, 1821; moved with his parents to Allegheny City, Pa., in 1826; attended the public schools; learned the art of printing in the office of the Somerset Whig; later was connected with a magazine-publishing company in Pittsburgh and with leading newspapers in New Orleans, La.; engaged in steamboating on the lower Mississippi River 1814-1847 and in gold mining in California in 1851; aided in the building of the Cambria Iron Works in Johnstown, Pa., in 1853, and was employed by that company until 1861, when he resigned; delegate to the first Republican National Convention at Philadelphia in 1856; served in the Union Army as first lieutenant and quartermaster of Company G, Third Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry; recruited the Fifty-fourth Regiment of Infantry and was commissioned its colonel February 27, 1862; brevetted brigadier general March 13, 1865; returned to Johnstown, Pa.; surveyor general (later secretary of internal affairs) of Pennsylvania 1865-1871; declined a renomination; engaged in mechanical and other industrial pursuits; elected as a Republican to the Forty-fifth Congress (March 4, 1877-March 3, 1879); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1878 to the Forty-sixth Congress; elected to the Forty-seventh, Forty-eighth, and Forty-ninth Congresses (March 4, 1881-March 3, 1887); chairman, Committee on Manufactures (Forty-seventh Congress); unsuccessful candidate for renomination in 1886; financially interested in banking and in the manufacture of steel; chairman of the Republican State convention in 1887; died in Johnstown, Cambria County, Pa., September 27, 1888; interment in Grand View Cemetery.