Outside Child

In her poignant essay, “When a Family Member Dies, and You’re the Outside Child,” writer and children’s rights activist Dr. Stacey Patton reflects on the disconnection she feels from her biological family. As an adoptee, she writes candidly about the emotional awkwardness of being the product of a secret affair—never fully embraced nor wholly acknowledged.

Reading her words, I immediately thought of Mama Willie, my maternal great-grandmother, whose short life left an indelible impact on the generations that followed. Her early death fractured the emotional and physical bonds of her children, and I have long wondered if the circumstances of her origin also contributed to the complexity of our family’s story.

My 2nd Great-Grandmother Willie Campbell Lee (January 5, 1895 - December 18, 1928)

According to family folklore, Big Ma—my 2nd great-grandmother—was pregnant with Mama Willie when white men attempted to rape her. In response, she and her husband, Willie Campbell, fled Mississippi and found refuge in Arkansas. This was during the post-Reconstruction era, a time when Black families across the South banded together to survive the resurgence of white supremacist violence. Lynchings were frequent and often performed publicly with impunity. Black bodies, burned and mutilated, became grotesque trophies in a society built on terror.

Willie and Big Ma fled with their three small children, hoping to escape that brutality.

The sadness in Aunt Bruetta’s eyes as she recounted this history still haunts me. The story of Willie Campbell—sometimes called James or John William Campbell—ends abruptly, shrouded in mystery. Some say he died of pneumonia while hiding in the swamps. Others whisper of a more sinister fate. One thing is certain: he vanished, leaving his family—and a pregnant wife—behind. Big Ma, left to survive, eventually remarried to secure a future for her four children.

For forty years, I’ve searched for Willie Campbell, our family’s unsung hero. I’ve scoured microfiche, conducted family interviews, and searched online records until my eyes burned. Yet I’ve found no census, military, voting, or tax record that definitively matches him. Only the vital records of his children hint at his existence. Even those are riddled with inconsistencies: his wife listed herself as “widowed” when she was actually divorced, and her former husband lived just down the road with a new family. Family stories claim the oldest children were born in Mississippi, but their birth certificates say Arkansas.

Alfred Sidney Campbell (1853-1941) and his first wife, Mary Jane Patterson Campbell (1863) sanharris52  originally shared this on Ancestry on 7 Sep 2009.

While I have yet to locate definitive records for Willie Campbell, one name consistently emerged throughout my research: Alfred Sidney Campbell, born around 1855 in the area that would later become Duck Hill, Montgomery County, Mississippi. He eventually made his home in Cross County, Arkansas, a migration path familiar to many Black families during Reconstruction and its aftermath.

At first, I believed Willie Campbell might be connected to Alfred’s line. My DNA matches through the Campbell surname continually pointed me toward Alfred’s descendants and extended family. As I explored further, I discovered that the European Campbell lineage—the family that enslaved Alfred Sidney Campbell’s relatives—maintained a direct and traceable connection to the Campbells identified in my DNA results.

There are family members who list Duck Hill, Montgomery, Mississippi, as the birthplace of Big Ma. Alfred Sidney Campbell was raised in Duck Hill. The Campbells and a small community of Blacks migrated from Duck Hill to Cross County, Arkansas. My great Aunts, Alfleeta and Almeta, were both born in Cross County.

Vandalia, Arkansas, was misspelled. Vanndale (formerly Oak Grove) is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Searcy Township, Cross County, Arkansas, United States.

Wynne is the largest city in and the county seat of Cross County, Arkansas, United States.

A century after a possible affair, people are still offended and hurt. It took me months to add Alfred to my public profile on Ancestry, connected to my DNA test, testing the waters to see if my hypothesis had a chance at being true. Puzzle pieces click. Years of diligent note-taking, tracking records, mapping, and charting DNA matches demonstrate their value.

I check my ego often, whispering to my ancestors in long, one-sided conversations to stay grounded in truth. I’ve learned to hold uncertainty with humility, resisting both romanticism and resentment. It’s easy to become entangled in confirmation bias or to chase a dramatic story line inspired more by television than truth. But this mystery—over a hundred years old—deserves more than spectacle.

Whether Willie Campbell or Alfred Sidney Campbell is the biological father of Mama Willie, one thing is sure: her story matters. She, along with the women who came before and after her, deserves to be remembered with clarity, care, and context.

This isn’t just a story about one family. It’s about the power of oral history, the disruption of DNA, and the enduring weight of untold truths.

Sources:

Patton, Stacey. When a Family Member Dies, and You’re the Outside Child. 1 June 2025, https://drstaceypatton1865.substack.com/p/when-a-family-member-dies-and-youre. Accessed 2 June 2025.

Ancestry.com. U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

Wikipedia contributors, "Vanndale, Arkansas," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vanndale,_Arkansas&oldid=1232728142 (accessed June 2, 2025).

Ancestry.com. Arkansas, Death Certificates, 1914–1969. Arkansas Department of Vital Records, 1967. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2019.

Wikipedia contributors, "Wynne, Arkansas," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wynne,_Arkansas&oldid=1292787565 (accessed June 2, 2025).