The poet's father, Samuel George Campbell, was born in Durban in 1861. In 1878 he traveled to Edinburgh to study medicine and won prizes for surgery, clinical surgery, and botany. He graduated with honors in 1882 and completed postgraduate work at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He also studied ear, nose and throat ailments in Vienna. In 1886, he returned to Scotland to take his M.D. and to become a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. While in Scotland, Dr. Campbell married Margaret Wylie Dunnachie, daughter of James Dunnachie, of Glenboig, Lanarkshire, a wealthy self-made businessman, and Jean Hendry of Eaglesham.