Romeo Campbell Romeo Campbell, a man labelled by an early pioneer as ''of good weight, good looks and good ability's Campbell came a bachelor five years later married a Wisconsin girl named Hattie Powell, then raised a family that would be part and parcel of Battle Creek, growing with the town. Campbell, born in 1844 at Pecatonia, Illinois, served in they Civil War and then came west to buy a cattle ranch, making the trip in a covered wagon with a Civil War buddy named George W. Smith. Campbell purchased 360 acres from the Iowa Railroad Land Company in 1868 for five dollars an acre and before long had one of the best spreads in the territory. On this land he built a sod shanty together with sod sheds and corrals and broke up his land himself with ox teams and sod-breaking plows, Because there were thousands of acres of free grazing land north of his place he never needed to use part of his acres for summer grazing. In his forty-two years in Ida County, Campbell acquired a reputation as a good businessman, a gregarious neighbor and a solid citizen. Some of his offspring would become civic leaders in the community into the next century and would serve in the state house and in the United States Congress.