Robert Campbell (colonist)

Biography

Robert Campbell (7 May 1829 – 19 January 1884) was a Jamaican-born emigrant from the United States to Lagos Colony who wrote books and published a newspaper. Initially apprenticed to a printer he trained as a teacher in Spanish Town. Finding his salary insufficient in the economic turmoil of post-abolition Jamaica he emigrated to Nicaragua and Panama before settling in New York City in 1853. He found work as a printer before being employed as a science teacher and then assistant principal at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1858 Campbell joined Martin R. Delany on the Niger Valley Exploring Party to look for a suitable site for the settlement of black Americans in West Africa. A site at Abeokuta (in modern-day Nigeria) was selected and the expedition returned to the United States.

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