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The Clunie Camerons from 1811 - 1923 Waterloo My great-great-great grandfather, Donald Cameron, was born in the Perthshire town of Little Dunkeld in about 1811 - when King George III was in his fifty-first year of rule. His father, John Cameron was a farmer, and his mother was Ann, a McDonald by birth.
For such a small place, Clunie has a fascinating history. A place of political and administrative importance at the time of Kenneth McAlpine, it also claimed the legend that Alexander the First's Queen Sybilla died and was buried there, as well as it being a resting place for the rampaging Edward the First. Were victims of the medieval Black Death entombed in stone on Castle Hill? Certainly a band of robbers once hid out on the man-made crannog in the loch, using it as a base from which to rob churchmen carrying money from Alyth to Dunkeld. On 20th February 1839, Catherine gave birth to a daughter who they named Ann. Another daughter, Margaret, was born in 1841, and the 1840s saw more children - Charlotte, Alexander, William and Barbara. A son, born in 1852, was named after Donald himself, and another son, Robert (born in 1854) was named after the Minister of Clunie Parish Church where Donald was Church Officer - Robert Leishman. In April 1856 my great-great grandfather was born at Pitscally, Peter Cameron. The Leishman legacy Robert Leishman, the Clunie Church Minister, was born in about 1800, and in 1844 - a year after becoming Minister at Clunie - he married his cousin, Elizabeth Gibb. The church was brand new then, having been built in 1843 after the previous church was destroyed by fire three years earlier. Robert Leishman presided over the weddings of two of Donald’s daughters - Ann (to Charles McGregor) and Barbara (to James Wilson). Robert died in 1871. Charles McGregor was a farm servant and, during the 1880s, lived with Ann at Drumdewan, Kinloch - about 3 miles east of Clunie. By 1887 Donald and Catherine Cameron were living with the McGregors, and Donald died there on 21st November of that year from long term heart disease, aged 76. Two years later Catherine died suddenly from a heart attack at 2.30 in the morning, also at Drumdewan.
But what of the Cameron brothers, Alexander, William, Donald, Robert and Peter? Alexander and Donald both joined the 72nd Highlanders and served in India, the Afghan War of 1878-80 and Egypt (1882). Alexander joined the 72nd Foot on the 15th August 1867 (his parents’ 30th wedding anniversary) when he was 21 years old, and his younger brother joined up just 3 weeks after his 18th birthday in 1870. During the Afghan War, in 1879, Donald was appointed as a piper in the regiment, and played his way into Kandahar after Lord Roberts' famous forced march from Kabul in August 1880. Both brothers saw action at Charasiab, Kabul and Kandahar, and Donald was also present at the earlier battle of the Peiwar Kotal, while Alexander was garrisoned at Kohat. In Egypt they were at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, advancing on the enemy position south of the canal. The 72nd returned to England in 1882 and were stationed on the Isle of Wight where Donald and Alexander both found wives. Alexander' marriage was to an 18 year old Elizabeth Dyer in January 1884, and barely a week later she gave birth to a son, Mark. Donald was a witness at the marriage, along with his future wife, Ann Topping (they were married 6 months later, and had their first daughter, Catherine, in March 1885). After duties at Windsor, Aldershot and Edinburgh, the two Camerons were, by 1890, living in Glasgow where Alexander worked as a railway store man, and Donald variously as a furnaceman, night watchman, tramway conducter and railway timekeeper.
Middle brother William did not opt for a military life abroad, but stayed as a farmer in Scotland. In 1870 he married an Angus girl, Jane Anderson from Newtyle (though her mother, Catherine Heggie, was English). A runaway horse Robert Leishman Cameron married Margaret Edward Begg at Errol in Perthshire, in 1878 when he was 24. Margaret came from Monimail in Fifeshire, and they lived together in Glasgow. In 1879 they had a daughter born back at Clunie. They named her Annie Pearson Dickson Cameron after Margaret’s mother, Ann Dickson. A son, Alexander, was born to them in Glasgow in 1880. A look at the 1881 census returns will find both these children staying with their grandparents, Donald and Catherine, at Concraigie, Clunie Parish. Robert can be found back in Glasgow working as a railway carter. Margaret was ill at this time, a patient at Greenock Poorhouse and Asylum - probably the reason her children were lodged with their grandparents. By April 1891 she was back at home with Robert, but five days before Christmas of that year she died from a long illness and exhaustion. In 1901, Robert, Alexander and Donald can all be found living in Kyle Street in Glasgow.
Since 1880, Robert had worked for J & P Cameron carting contractors as a lorryman. One Spring morning in 1923 he had collected some wood and iron poles from Buchanan Street Station and took them to Sighthill Goods Station to be weighed. As he brought the horse-drawn lorry off the weigh bridge, which was on a steep slope, the poles slid, prodding the horse and causing it to bolt. Robert held on to the animal and brought it round, but he couldn’t keep control and fell, being trampled. The head injury and fracture of both his legs was too much for a man of his age, and he died in hospital early the next morning. The Horsburghs His younger brother, Peter, had died 10 years earlier at Dundee Royal Infirmary, aged just 56. There were happier times for him in 1881, when he married Margaret Auchterlonie Horsburgh, the eldest daughter of William Reekie Horsburgh, a city pioneer of road transport and carting. Although the couple married in Dundee, the home of the Horsburghs, they lived in Glasgow where they had their first son - Peter McDougall Cameron, in November of that year. Peter (snr) worked as a railway carter, but by 1891 he was a grocer. The couple also had five more children - Margaret Birrell, William Horsburgh, Catherine Campbell, Robert Leishman and Walter. The family story goes that Peter’s grocery venture failed, and perhaps this is what prompted a move to Dundee by the turn of the century, where Maggie had her more prosperous Horsburgh relations.
Before that, in 1907, he married Elizabeth Blyth, a jute weaver from Wellington Street. They lived at 38 Lilybank Road and had several children including Elizabeth Blyth, Robert Leishman (the name of the Clunie Church Minister still lived on 40 years after his death), Margaret Horsburgh, Harry Blyth, Peter McDougall, Alexander Blyth, and David Horsburgh. Actually there had been a previous Peter McDougall, born in 1917 - sadly he died after 13 weeks from whooping cough.
Further tragedy struck in 1923 - just two months before his uncle Robert was killed in the lorry accident - Peter McDougall Cameron died after a routine appendix operation went wrong. Just under nine months later, their last son, David was born. A walking funeral from the house at 38 Lilybank Road was held on Saturday 3rd March. His daughter, Margaret (my gran), has happier memories of him, “... he used to sit in his easy chair and was always quoting Robbie Burns. He could play the pipes, the fiddle and the piano - everything he touched. He was a natural musician and winter nights when he was in, he always sat in his easy chair and played the malodeon. He sat in that corner and he had a nice singing voice.” Names married in: Into my direct line: McDonald, Campbell, Horsburgh, Blyth, Ewing.
Name Notes: The name comes from the Gaelic 'Camshron', meaning wry, or crooked nose, although it is fairly likely this is in a toponymic rather than a facial sense. The earliest form of the name appears as Cambron, from the lands of Camberone, now the parish of Cameron in Fife. Cameron appears as early as 1306, and about 100 years later they appear at the site of the traditional clan seat - Lochaber. Links of interest: The Horsburgh family | Family main page | |
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