The immediate vicinity of the Alexander Campbell Mansion includes the mansion proper, Campbell’s detached hexagonal study and two dependent structures, a schoolhouse and smokehouse/springhouse. Also included is the Campbell family cemetery—”God’s Acre”—in which Campbell and members of his family are buried.

The Campbell Mansion was built in stages. The first portion was built by John Brown, Alexander Campbell’s future father-in-law (not to be confused with abolitionist John Brown), ca. 1790. It was an elaborate frame residence for what was then a frontier community and contained window glass and glass-doored bookcases said to be the first in that section of what was then Virginia.

The well-laid limestone foundation is still serviceable after 200 years. Tradition has it that the lumber for the house was whip-sawed from logs from the farm. Most of the wood used in the house is walnut, except for the flooring, which is largely quarter-sawed oak. The floors are still sound.

John Brown built the original section of the home toward the east. On the ground level, there are three rooms: a kitchen, pantry, and bedroom. The limestone walls were later plastered.

The first floor also had three rooms: a parlor or living room and two rooms (possibly a bedroom and a dining room) to the left or north of the parlor. The parlor has four windows, three doors, and a fireplace.
Alexander Campbell married Margaret Brown in this room in 1811. A stairway led to the second floor. The walls were of walnut sections, with a carved border at the top shaped by Brown, who also fashioned the fireplace. There was a porch on the west side. The second floor contained three or four bedrooms.

In 1819, Campbell enclosed the porch into a hallway with a set of stairs and provided a large schoolroom and a dormitory room above for the Buffalo Seminary, which he founded that year. The house was painted white, and green Venetian shutters were installed. In 1823, after the seminary closed, he divided the large classroom on the first floor into his master bedroom (“The Clock Room”) and a dining room. He carved bedrooms for his growing family—he eventually fathered 14 children—out of the second-floor dormitory. In this, which is still its external configuration, the main block of the gable-roofed Mansion was seven bays wide across the front. A single-story porch shelters the three central bays.

Between 1836 and 1840, Campbell built the 3-bay section on the west, called “Strangers Hall” by the townspeople, to accommodate his ever-increasing numbers of visitors and houseguests. He extended the back part of the former seminary schoolroom in a brick ell, elongating the dining room, to which he connected the single-story frame guest wing. This wing consisted of a parlor with two small bedrooms to the rear and a porch across the front supported by slender white columns. The original French wallpaper from the companies of Dufour and Jean Zuber is an outstanding decorative feature of the west wing parlor. When these last additions were complete, the house contained some 27 rooms.

After Alexander Campbell died in 1866, his son William inherited the house, where his mother, the second Mrs. Campbell, lived for many years. Later, William’s sister Decima acquired the house. In 1913, she sold it to Earl W. Oglebay of Wheeling, who donated the home, its furnishings, and 15.5 acres of land to the Campbell Historical and Memorial Association in 1920.

In 1946, the Association, which had experienced difficulty in securing funds, asked the Disciples of Christ Historical Society and Bethany College to assume joint management and control. Today, Bethany College retains responsibility for its restoration and preservation.

Restoration, performed about 1940 on the ground level, first floor, and exterior, sought to restore them to their appearance around 1860. The upper, or second story, was not restored. Many original Campbell furnishings were acquired, new wall coverings were installed, and quarters were provided for a curator to live in the house. In 1992, a further careful restoration was completed. A landscape documentation and restoration study, including a preliminary archeological investigation, has also recently been completed.

Campbell’s hexagonal brick study is located some 100 feet to the west of the mansion. It is one story with a central lantern on the roof. It has a pointed arch entrance and niches, buttresses, and a small rear ell. The study was constructed for Campbell by Louis Hobbs who did other work for Campbell in the Bethany area. Campbell did most of his writing and conducted his business activity from the study. He was often at work there as early as 4 a.m. A contributing well is located between the main house and the schoolhouse.

Included as a contributing site is the Campbell Cemetery located on a hill south of the Mansion across West Virginia State Route 67. Campbell chose the site for the cemetery following the death of his fifth child, Amanda. After Campbell’s death in 1866, a stone wall was erected around the cemetery. The stones came from two old flour mills located along Buffalo Creek. A large white monument marks Campbell’s grave. Other members of the Campbell family also are buried in the cemetery as well as well as some faculty and presidents of Bethany College.

Also on the immediate grounds are a smokehouse/springhouse and a schoolroom. The former, which lies east of the kitchen, was reconstructed in 1951-63, although it rests over the old stone trough. The schoolroom, a one-room frame building initially built in the 1820s near the northeast corner of the house, was reconstructed on its same site in 1950-60, using the original floorboards. Both of these buildings are non-contributing. There also is a non-contributing site, the stone foundation of a former greenhouse/summer house located southeast of the main house in the front yard. A parking lot located south of the Mansion off of West Virginia State Route 67 is a non-contributing structure.

The original article text was created by Associate Archivist, Abigail Ayers.