Church History Trip - part 8 (Bethany)

After visiting God's acre, we toured the Campbell mansion... also known as Bethany. Here is a photo of the house as we walked down the path.

The house itself was built in 3 sections. The first section was given to the Campbell's by Margaret's father, John Brown, to keep them from moving to Zanesville, Ohio. The second section was built to house the school started by Alexander. The third section is called "Stranger Hall" and was built to host the various visiters to the Campbell mansion.




This is a shot of the main room in the first section, usually known as the parlor. The footstools in front of the couch were used by Alexander and Margaret when they married. They kneeled on them.









This is Thomas Campbell's bed. It is in the room off the parlor. This is the bed that Thomas passed in.












This is Alexander's favorite chair in his room. He would often sit by this chair and read or rock the cradle that is just to the left of this chair in the picture.












This is Alexander's bed in his room on the first floor. Alexander died in this bed. Jackie took a second to pose for this picture. On the dresser in the back, you can see the famous "death mask" of Alexander. According to tradition, as soon as Alexander died, some of his attendants took some plaster-of-paris and laid it on this face and an artist fashioned it together as an impression of him shortly after passing.





Here is a picture taken inside "Stranger Hall." This was the guest house of the Campbell's that was attached to their mansion. Many famous people stayed here... including James A. Garfield (President of the United States), Henry Clay and Jefferson Davis just to name a few.










Here's a picture of Jackie in Margaret Campbell's kitchen. (She loved it by the way...)














Upstairs in the Campbell mansion, you would find Thomas' original gravestone. It was stolen and thrown in a field, later to be returned by a teenager.












As both groups wrapped up their tours of the house, we paused to pose for a picture on the porch of the Campbell mansion. It was a great tour. Very insightful and an incredible house.















Following the tour of the mansion, we visited Alexander Campbell's personal, detached study. Some have called it the "iglue" because it does resemble such from the outside. But it was, by far the coolest place on the mansion grounds. Campbell would sit here often and write and study from very early in the morning until very late at night.

Some day, when we have land, I will have a similar study.






Here is a picture of the outside of Campbell's study. If you follow the link from the writing above about the study, there is a very awesome picture of Campbell in his study taken in the 1850's. I purchased a copy of that picture and it sits in my office.







This concludes this post. I've got one more post to make. This is will cover the Bethany Church and a couple of cemetaries.


Jim