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Campbell Sheridan was born in Butler, this state, June 30, 1819, and was a son of John and Mary Campbell Sheridan. Patrick Sheridan, grandfather of Campbell Sheridan, was a native of Ireland. He and his wife, whose maiden name was Mary Spence, emigrated to the United States and located in Westmoreland County, where his son, John Sheridan, was born. The latter became a blacksmith and moved from Westmoreland County to Butler County, where he remained until 1830, when he located in Freeport, Armstrong County. During the time of the building of the Pennsylvania Canal he took a contract for the building of a section between the Allegheny Aqueduct and Leechburg. He later took up his residence in Centerville, Indiana County, and from there he moved to Johnstown in 1837. In 1842 John Sheridan located in Brookville, and in 1854 in the State of Illinois, where he lived but a short time. He died in Johnstown in 1855.
Campbell Sheridan received a rudimentary education in the private or "subscription" schools of Butler County, and also attended the Indiana Academy at Indiana, this state. In 1839 he, with Cyrus L. Pershing and George Nelson Smith, was appointed a clerk in the canal collector's office in Johnstown under James Potts. This position he held for six years, when a political change in the state government compelled the entire force to step down and out. When the canal closed down for the winter that year Mr. Sheridan and Cyrus L. Pershing became students in Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pa. At this institution they "batched" together and declared they lived "on the fat of the land at a cost of 60 cents each week."
After leaving Jefferson College, Mr. Sheridan and George Nelson Smith invested in a section boat on the canal and made trips between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. At the dissolution of their partnership, Mr. Smith retired and Mr. Sheridan became both captain and cook of the boat. Financially the venture was not a success. After leaving the canal Mr. Sheridan engaged in teaching school in Johnstown. Two years later he became a student in the office of his former Indiana classmate, Dr. John Lowman, in whose office Doctor Toner was also a student. In the spring of 1849 Campbell Sheridan was graduated from the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. He then returned to Johnstown and formed a partnership with his former preceptor, Doctor Lowman, and was soon one of Johnstown's most successful practitioners. From 1854 to 1858 Doctor Sheridan lived on a farm in Earlville, Ill., where he also conducted a drug store. After the Civil war he and the late Dr. S. M. Swan, who
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