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RANK L. CAMPBELL, lawyer, assistant attorney-general of the United States for the department of the interior, was born August 26, 1843, in Hancock county. West Virginia. He is a son of George W. Campbell, who married Miss Eliza Jane Hindman. He attended the common schools of his native county, and Paris academy, at Paris, Pennsylvania, and Washington and Jefferson college, at Washington, Pennsylvania. To support himself while at college, he engaged in teaching; and for a time he was superintendent of public schools in Ohio. At the end of his junior year, in 1863, he left his studies at college and entered the Union army as a private in the fifty-eighth regiment, Pennsylvania volunteer infantry, for emergency service, and took an active part in opposing the raids of General Morgan in Ohio, and in Morgan's final capture in August, 1863. He entered the service of the United States Government, at Washington, District of Columbia, in the early seventies and, while so connected, he pursued a course of study in the law department of Columbian university, from which he was graduated with the degree of LL.B., and was subsequently admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia. For six years, he was a legal examiner and reviewer in the pension bureau, and was then transferred to the office of the secretary of the interior. His fidelity and efficiency secured his promotion from one grade to another under the various and changing heads of departments until, on April 16, 1903, he reached the position of assistant attorney-general for the department of the interior. He had previously been assistant attorney for that department, and, from 1900 to 1903, second assistant secretary of the interior.

Mr. Campbell is a member of the bar of the United States Supreme court, and is an authority on federal law and procedure. For some years he has occupied the chair of federal administrative law in the National university law school of Washington, District of Columbia. Washington and Jefferson college conferred upon him the honorary degree of A.M., and on October 15, 1902, that of LL.D.