George Washington Campbell was born on January 12, 1817 at Cherry Valley, Cortland County, New York, United States; the son of David Campbell; his ancestry was Scotch. When he was four or five years old, his father moved to Sandusky, Ohio.
George went to school for a time at Westfield, New York, and was trained for newspaper work in which he engaged with his father at Sandusky for a time.
In 1849 Campbell moved to Delaware, Ohio, and with a partner engaged in mercantile business until 1856 when this was discontinued. Having been for many years keenly interested in fruit growing, he now turned his whole attention to horticulture. From the first in his commercial work in horticulture he specialized in grapes. It was at Delaware, and during the early period of his specialization, that the Delaware grape, so named in recognition of its place of re-discovery (not of origin), began to attract attention. Campbell propagated it extensively and became largely instrumental in the wide dissemination which it received. Early in his commercial work with grapes he erected greenhouses to provide improved facilities for rooting the cuttings. The glass for these houses he imported from Europe. It must have been during this same period that he undertook the grape-breeding activities which later brought him into prominence. His first experiments were with seedlings and crosses of the native sorts. The results, however, were disappointing. He then turned to hybridizing the native varieties and the most healthy of the foreign sorts. His ideals were very high. They were described in a paper on the "perfect grape" which he read before the meeting of the Ohio State Horticultural Society in 1891. This was the season before his seedling grape, later to be named Campbell Early, produced its first fruit. Of all the thousands of seedling grapes he had grown and fruited, this one, he was convinced, approached most nearly the ideal for which he was striving. At the present time it is by far the most valuable of all the varieties which he originated. He also gained some note as a potato breeder, though none of his potato introductions are now important. In 1878 he was appointed by President Hayes as commissioner to the Universal and International Exposition at Paris. He sailed for Paris on April 13 and remained in France during that season. While there he wrote a series of articles on his observations which were published in the Ohio Farmer. His comments on the ravages of the grape phylloxera, then devastating the vineyards of France, were particularly informing. During the last years of his life, he devoted much of his time to experimenting in plant propagation, especially with soft wood grafting and the determination of the compatibility of varieties and species.
He was married, on August 29, 1846, to Elizabeth Little. They lived to celebrate their golden wedding.
