Campbell is a small town situated on the edge of the Ghaap Plateau in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, at the intersection of the N8 National Route and R385 Regional Route.
It is located 48 km east of Griekwastad (also known as Griquatown) on the N8 national highway.
The town of Campbell was originally known as Knovel Valley and then Groote Fontein, but was renamed in honour of the Reverend John Campbell who visited the Cape Colony in 1813.
Campbell falls within Siyancuma Local Municipality and Pixley ka Seme District Municipality.
History
The history of modern settlement of Campbell dates back to 1805 when a group of Griqua, including Captain Andries Waterboer, travelled with missionary Jan Matthys Kok from Klaarwater (now Griquatown) to the territory of the Tswana near the modern town of Kuruman. Encountering strong springs in a valley at the edge of the Ghaap Plateau, they gave the place the name of Knovel Valley, noting its potential for future crop cultivation.
It was only in 1811 that the Reverend Lambert Jansz, accompanying the traveller William Burchell, revisited the place, taking possession of the springs, by now known as Groote Fontein (Great Fountain), in the name of the London Missionary Society.
Before long the name of the place would be changed again: when the Reverend John Campbell, on a tour of inspection in 1813, reached the nascent village and asked its name, he was told it was Campbell.
In 1816 Cornelis Kok II (1778-1858) was declared Griqua Kaptyn (Captain) of Campbell. Other members of the Kok family had resided there from the beginning of the settlement.
The Reverend John Bartlett was stationed as a missionary at Campbell from 1825 and supervised the construction of a mission church there between 1827 and 1831. Many missionaries and travellers of the nineteenth century passed through the valley and the settlement – including William Burchell, George Thompson, Andrew Smith, Robert Moffat, David Livingstone and G.A. Farini.
