David Campbell (1750–1812) was born in Augusta County. Late in the 1770s he combined service as a Virginia militia officer, rising to major, with employment as clerk of Washington County. Campbell was admitted to the bar and moved to North Carolina, where he represented Greene County in the state legislature and served as a judge both for North Carolina and for the short-lived state of Franklin in what is now eastern Tennessee. In 1790 George Washington appointed Campbell a judge for the Southwest Territory, and after Tennessee won statehood he sat on its Superior Court of Law and Equity, 1797–1807. James Madison appointed Campbell a territorial judge in Mississippi in 1811 but poor health kept him from filling that position (PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 31 vols. description ends , 16:478; Jackson, Papers description begins Sam B. Smith, Harold D. Moser, and others, eds., The Papers of Andrew Jackson, 1980– , 6 vols. description ends , 1:122n; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 1:50, 2:174, 175 [7, 8 June 1790, 2, 3 Mar. 1811]; Thomas Jefferson Campbell, Records of Rhea: A Condensed County History [1940], 118–20).

On 3 Nov. 1791 Campbell advised TJ of the naming of thomas jefferson campbell (PTJ description begins Julian P. Boyd, Charles T. Cullen, John Catanzariti, Barbara B. Oberg, and others, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 1950– , 31 vols. description ends , 22:290, 27:805). The French revolutionary general Jean victor moreau was accused of complicity with the Royalists, exiled from France in 1804, and soon settled near Trenton, New Jersey (Connelly, Napoleonic France description begins Owen Connelly and others, eds., Historical Dictionary of Napoleonic France, 1985 description ends , 344).