Source:Pilcher, Margaret Campbell. Historical Sketches of the Campbell, Pilcher and Kindred Families

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InLine Citation

Source:Pilcher, 1911

Review

from Diarmid Campbell, 2003

As to your comment on what has been said of Margaret Pilcher's work...What is said of her work is that it is a great help AFTER the Campbells arrived in Pennsylvania. What everyone has to be warned about is BEFORE they arrived in the colony. I wonder whether Steve Bevins has taken the material (before Pennsylvania) from the Pilcher book, as anyone might do had they not been warned.

The reason that I would issue this warning with confidence is that, based upon those early Campbell generations as outlined by Pilcher, two different research efforts have been undertaken in Ireland in the past twenty years by groups of descendants in the USA. A considerable number of people contributed to pay a researcher. The clear result was to clarify that no evidence could be turned up in support of any of that early Pilcher information. That is not surprising since Pilcher herself quotes as a source for the material she published (about those early Irish and Scottish generations of that Campbell ancestry) that she got it from an (un-named) elderly lady. I cannot quote her exactly but that was the essence of her source. Obviously I have nothing against people as sources, but one can hardly call that 'documentation' when it is about people who lived well before their lifetime, and out of any 'oral tradition' context. It was the best she could do under the circumstances - unless of course she had given the name and address and relationship of the old lady to the Campbells.

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