About
American oil heiress and business figure whose childhood wealth made her a national headline in the early 1900s. She was known for being one of the first Black women millionaires in the United States.
Before fame
She was given 160 acres of land by the Federal Government when she was 12 years old due to the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887. She was given a parcel of land that was widely considered poor farmland, and her family struggled to pay the taxes on it. She saw her life change in 1911 when her father leased the land to Standard Oil to manage those costs. She became famous in 1913 after oil was discovered on her property and turning what had once been unwanted land into a source of immense wealth. She purchased her large home in Kansas City in the early 1920s after relocating from Oklahoma.
Trivia
Her Kansas City home is now known as the Rector Mansion. She became one of the most widely discussed Black children in America by 1914 as magazines and newspapers followed her story and debated how her wealth should be managed.
Family life
She was born into a family of African descendants of the Muscogee Nation. She later went by the names Sarah Rector Campbell and Sarah Campbell Crawford after marriage. She married Kenneth Campbell and had three sons She died from a stroke on July 22nd, 1967, and was buried in Blackjack Cemetery in Taft, Oklahoma.
Associated with
Her Kansas City home has been visited by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Joe Louis.
