Peter Mayor Campbell was Sue's great-great-grandfather. The family story goes that he travelled the world, composing Bradshaws timetables. The account below shows a somewhat more humble life.
In 1914 in a dedication at the front of his book "Newton in Makerfield, Its History, with some account of its people" John Henry Lane wrote:
PETER MAYOR CAMPBELL was born on the 28th May, 1838, "in a house on the south side of the High-street of Stevenston," a village in Ayrshire, and is the younger son of Robert Cunningham Campbell and his wife Mary, the eldest sister of Peter Mayor of Coatbridge. On the father's side there was a tradition that the family was descended from John Campbell, "the soldier," second son of Glencairn, of Loudon, who took the name "Campbell" after his maternal grandfather, John of Argyle, through his mother Margaret, in the early part of the sixteenth century, and inherited her estates in Ayrshire, as they were the only Campbells in the neighbourhood, and that there had been a soldier in the family for generations, notably in the Black Watch and Scots Greys. His father's uncle, John went through the Peninsular War in the latter regiment and was also at the Battle of Waterloo, and during the long peace broke in horses, but was killed at the very door on the morning that the subject of our sketch was born, so the continuity was broken except that Mr Campbell served seven years in the Newton Volunteers. His father was a silk weaver, but on that industry declining, joined his brother-in-law, Peter Mayor, in making tiles to drain the Duke of Portland's estates in Ayrshire. Thence they removed in 1843 to Eccleston, Lancashire, to manage a tilery for Lord Derby. In 1846 they removed to Newton to do the same work at Mr Thomas Legh's tilery near the Gas Works. From the tilery, Mr Campbell went to the Printing Works, where for twenty-six years he was engaged in Bradshaw's Continental Guide Office, whence he removed to Manchester and was guide compiler and printer's reader at the late Mr John Heywood's printing-office. Returning to Newton as agent for the Liberal Party, he devoted five years to the constituency during the great political schism, and whilst here attended to the Ince Division in which Mr Sam Woods gained the seat for the Labour Party. He did similar work in the Bassetlaw Division for the Liberal Whip. An opening for a brick salesman offering in the neighbourhood, he fulfilled that office for a short time, and then removed with his wife and family to York, near which city he now resides. Incidentally and pro bono publico, he spent a twelvemonth in York and in the British Museum writing out quotations for the Oxford English Dictionary that brought him under the notice of Sir James Murray, and the cacoethes scribendi often moved him to contribute to local newspapers.