Campbell, along with Texas Governor Sam Houston, was a prominent spokesman for remaining in the Union prior to the Civil War.

Campbell and his family left Texas the next day to run supply routes for the Union and pioneer lands in Missouri and Kansas.

[3] The Witter family had arrived in America in 1639 and had suffered religious persecution at the hands of the Puritans, fighting for civil liberties in the New World.

[4] Thomas and Clarissa were always on the frontier, traveling in covered wagons west and giving birth to 12 children - three sets of twins included.

Traveling in wagons, they crossed the Indian Territory up the Old Texas Road to Pettis County in north central Missouri.

Here they settled on Walnut Creek above the Colorado River and, on December 7, 1849, gave birth to twins - a boy Lafayette and a girl California Campbell.

It was during one of these journeys back to east Texas for a reunion with her brother and sister that Clarissa died and was buried in an unmarked grave at the base of a pine tree by the trail.

The question was hotly debated during 1860 throughout the state with Governor Sam Houston and Thomas L. Campbell, two of the strongest supporters of staying with the Union.

They immediately seized Thomas and held him captive all day, forcing him to "fire the anvils" as they celebrated the entry of Texas into the Confederate states.

At one side on top of the anvil was a hole used by the smithy to place the handle of a chisel for certain operations such as the cutting of a metal bar.

At the end of the day Tom drove Lafayette home and ordered his family to pack their belongings for a long trip.

Tom's oldest son David Witter Campbell drove the herd South to Mexico in order to deny the Confederacy use of the cattle.

Further, Missouri was the center of roving guerrilla bands of outlaws - some dressed in military uniforms - raiding, looting, and plundering the countryside.

Disgusted here by garrisons of soldiers swindling and stealing land for the railroads, Thomas moved his family once again in 1871 to the area around Sedan, Kansas in Chautauqua County.

News of the "deep red loam" just south in The Unassigned Lands of Indian Territory often reached southern Kansas and on April 22, 1889, Lafayette Campbell rode in the land run, staking a claim in an area that has since become known as "Cowboy Flat" about 8 miles (13 km) northeast of what would become the territorial capital of Guthrie, Oklahoma.

Lafayette spent the summer building a log cabin for his family and a half-dugout home for his father Thomas Lopton Campbell now 80 years old and pioneering still.

This was great news for the family - Lafayette and George Washington rode 300 miles (480 km) south for a reunion with their brother who had been lost and thought dead for 30 years.

He is buried in the historic Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma where his headstone reads "Texas Ranger 1839, Thomas L. Campbell, Born Dec. 27, 1809, Died Sept. 22, 1893, My Trust Is In God"[8]