History of Michigan, / by Charles Moore. [Vol. 3]

1744 HISTORY OF MICHIGAN
lows the same business in Muskegon, and May is the wife of Hector
Brown, of Montreal, Canada.
Donald J. Campbell grew up in Buffalo, New York, and Chicago,
Illinois. His principal schooling was in the latter city. At the age of
thirteen, his practical training for life began in learning the trade of
moulder. His first experience in that line was at Rock Falls, in Illinois.
As a young man he learned his trade in different places in the east,
worked at the Newport News Ship and Dry Dock Plant, also on other
government work, and his early experience thoroughly equipped him
for all branches of his trade. In I894 Mr. Campbell moved to Chicago,
and was connected with the Gates Iron Works, until I9oo. The following two years were spent in Milwaukee with the Bucyrus Steam Shovel
and Dredge Company, as foundry foreman. Returning to Chicago, his
services were employed as foundry foreman for Ferguson & Lange for
two years. In the meantime the automobile industry had become important, and his next connection was as foreman of the Olds Motor
Company at Lansing, Michigan. In April, I908, Mr. Campbell came
to Muskegon and established the foundry now conducted under the
firm name of Campbell, Wyant and Cannon. The capital stock of this
large local plant is one hundred fifty thousand dollars, and its specialty
is the manufacture of automobile castings, which are used in automobile factories throughout the country. The career of Mr. Campbell has
been that of a self-made man. After a number of years in his trade,
he had accumulated a capital of three thousand dollars, and has built
up an industry which now employs the capital of many thousands of
dollars, does a business aggregating several times the capital stock, and
is one of the important industries of Muskegon. Mr. Campbell has
recently returned from a trip abroad in the interests of his health.
In I9o6 he married Miss Nannie M. Arnesen of Chicago. They are
the parents of two children, James and Anna. Fraternally Mr. Campbell's associations are with Muskegon Lodge, No. 274, of the Benevolent
and Protective Order of Elks, and he votes and supports the Republican
party.
FREDERICK A. WASHBURN. An honored and representative citizen
of Ionia county, who has here exerted potent and beneficent influence in
the development and upbuilding of one of the great industrial enterprises
of Michigan is Frederick A. Washburn, who is general superintendent of
the great silk-thread mills and business of the Belding Silk Company, in
the beautiful little city of Belding, the town itself owing practically its
great commercial prestige and definite civic prosperity to the important
corporation which has given to the place its name as well as its fame, the
works of the silk company here being among the largest in the world
and the products of the same going forth into all sections of the civilized
world. Mr. Washburn individually directed the manufacture of the
first spool of silk ever made in Michigan, and he has been untiring in his
efforts for the development of the splendid industry with which he has
here been identified from its initiation, even as he has stood exponent of
the utmost civic loyalty.
Frederick A. Washburn is a scion of fine New England stock and is
representative of a family that was founded in America in the early
colonial era of our national history. He was born in Tolland county,
Connecticut, on the 25th of March, I855, and is a son of Alanson and
Laura (White) Washburn, whose marriage was there solemnized on the
Ist of November, 1852. Alanson Washburn was born and reared in Connecticut, as was also his wife, and during the entire course of a long
and useful career of productive activity he was engaged in the foundry
business at Coventry, Tolland county, Connecticut, where he died on the