Campbell searches for family paintings - Part 2
On a recent trip to Cherry Hill and Pleasantville, Lunenburg County, I noted that the red Campbell House Flag waves in the wind from atop the Campbell’s home, which contains the images of six 19th century sailing vessels, which Ian Campbell has collected and mounted on his living room wall. He is proud of these photographs of his great-great grandfather’s sailing fleet, out of Weymouth, Nova Scotia.
It’s Ian’s hobby, which started out when Ian came upon one of the ship paintings and the search was on.
Ian knew there must be other paintings around because he remembered seeing them as a young lad visiting the family home in Weymouth. Unfortunately, over the years they disappeared.
Ian’s great-great grandfather, Colin Campbell was a Master Mariner who operated a general store and a shipyard in the mid 1800s. He built nine vessels, had an oil painting done of each and named them after members of his family.
Using information from an aunt, he tracked the “John Campbell” in Texas through a cousin, who had seen a Campbell ship painting during World War 1; he traced the “Helen Campbell” to a Dart cousin in England. With information from a Yarmouth curator, Ian located “The Campbell” in the Haugsund Museum in Norway.
The paintings were not all done by the same artist, but each had something that could identify it as a Campbell ship, even the ones that flew under the flag of a different country.
