A Brief Story

of

one branch of the

in

Prepared by

Albert F. Cameron

It has been the purpose of the writer of this account to get as much accurate information as possible of one branch of the Cameron Clan, which might be a source for some members of future generations in tracing their ancestry. In its Scottish origin our tracing is only a supposition. It is hoped, however, that we have fairly accurate knowledge of our American forbears.

The name "CAMERON" according to some historical writers may have had two meanings. The old Celtic word "Cuimer" meaning "valley and "on" meaning "small". It would therefore mean a "small valley" and was probably given to the original bearer because of the location of his property in such a place. Other writers, however, claim it is of Scotch origin, in the Highland language meaning "Wry Nose" because the bearer had a crooked nose. This latter view seems the most reasonable because the largest early family of the name was located in Scotland. It has been spelled in different ways as Cambrun, Cabron, and as we know it today "CAMERON".

Early in the tenth century, approximately 900 years ago, the most remote ancestor of which we have any record was an "Angus Cameron", a man of high distinction among his people. From one of the succeeding generations of this ancestor, about the seventeenth century, we find a "Sir Ewen Cameron", at one time "cup bearer" to the King of England. My uncle John used to say, who had a descendant by the name of Christain Cameron from whom our great-great grandfather Daniel Cameron has some relation, because from the history of our great grandfather, Alexander Cameron, the son of Daniel Cameron, we know that he named his eldest son "Christain".

We know that many Camerons came to America during the latter part of the century 1750 to 1800 and that our immediate branch came during the last few years of the century. Our great-great grandfather, Daniel Cameron with his wife Catherine (McDonald) and their son Alexander, who was then quite young, had a perilous journey crossing the Atlantic. They were shipwrecked, so the story goes, and drifted foe many weeks of the high seas. Finally reaching Philadelphia, they journeyed toward what is now the northern part of West Virginia near the Pennsylvania line. This territory was then known as Virginia. Just how long they were in this part of Virginia is not known but we do know that our great grandfather Alexander was about 13 years of age when they reached Ohio. Daniel, his father, had evidently served in the early Virginia militia because otherwise he would not have been entitled to settle in what was then known as the Virginia Military Lands. Furthermore, he evidently was well acquainted with General Nathaniel Massie, a Virginian who figured very prominently in the surveying of this area, and planing the city of Chillicothe. It is presumed that our great-great grandfather Daniel and his wife and son Alexander and another son, Hugh, came down the Ohio to the early settlement that Massie had founded at Manchester, on the Ohio just above Maysville. He, Daniel, probable assisted in some of the surveying work in the area. Following the Maysville trace or the old Maysville Road they probably came inland to beautiful Paint Valley where Massie had already planned a home for himself some 22 miles west of Chillicothe. It is said that Daniel, his wife, Catherine, and son Alexander, and two other sons, John and Hugh, first settled about twelve miles west of Chillicothe between Upper and Lower Twin Creeks and where the present town of Bourneville is now located. This first home was settled about 1800 just before Ohio became a state. This Paint Valley area was a most beautiful district fringed by hills to the south and to the north that probably reminded our older ancestors of their Scottish homeland. Many of the early settlers lied this beautiful valley but its heavy vegetative grasses, timber areas and its swampy nature made it a suitable place for "ague" or the "shakes", a kind of malaria that seemed to hover over "The Valley of the Kings". Many of the settlers were finally forced to seek the foothills to the side of the valley for their permanent homes to escape this disease of early spring. It is said that our great-great grandmother, Catherine, died there in the year 1808 due to this disease. After his wife's death, Daniel with his sons then moved to the highlands southwest of the present town of Bainbridge in what is known as Beech Flats country. His homestead of 300 acres was located adjacent to the Old Maysville Trace near the hill known as Iron Mountain. Here his eldest son, Alexander, my great grandfather, married a Susannah Beavers in 1816. He reared a family and engaged in the lumbering business, operating one of the first sawmills west of the Alleghenies. John, another son of Daniel and Catherine Cameron, was born in 1805. He married Fannie Davis in 1838. To this union was born five children, Rachel, Sarah Jane, Davis J., Catherine, and John Gurley Cameron. The oldest daughter of John Cameron, Rachel, married Thos. Moore, January 1, 1862. Mrs. Adele Simon of Coffeyville, a granddaughter of Thomas Moore and a great granddaughter of John Cameron, has discovered an old deed dated November 10, 1831. It was found in a metal trunk of her great grandfather along with some other information that seemed to indicate that our great great grandfather Daniel was married twice. The names of Daniel Cameron and wife Catherine, Hugh and wife Sara, and Alexander and wife, Susannah appear on this deed which I have verified at the courthouse in Waverly, Ohio. Some other papers in the trunk seemed to indicate that the elder Daniel was married to Capt. Ballinger's Widow. I could not verify this at Waverly. This is the quotation from these papers.

This writing is in the handwriting of Fannie (Davis) Cameron, the wife of John Cameron, one of sons the great great grandfather, Daniel Cameron.

From this above information it would seem that old Daniel was married twice although I cannot verify it from any records in Pike county. He could have been married in Virginia, or Kentucky, so it may be true.

Anyway, he had a wife in 1831 because she signed the deed and it was witnessed by Hugh and wife Sara, and Alexander and wife Susannah. David Eubanks drew the deed and it conveys some 98 acres in Pike County on Paint Creek for the sum of $200. This deed is recorded at Waverly in Book 6 folios 489 and 490.

From records we have, we know that Daniel's first wife died in 1808 near Bourneville, Ohio.

Alexander Cameron (our ancestor) was married to Susannah Beavers (1816) and had sons, Christain, John, (my grandfather) Daniel, Alexander and two daughters Nancy and Mary but Daniel would not have been old enough to have had a part in this deed.

Daniel, my great-great grandfather, it is said, lived to the advanced age of 104 and is buried in the family cemetery near the foot of Iron Mountain. My great grandfather, Alexander, lost a leg in his lumbering operations and died at the age of 68 years. He is also buried in the old family cemetery that now is greatly neglected. The flat sandstone slabs that marked some of these graves are so eroded that the names are obliterated. A few markers of the early 1840's and 50's can be deciphered. These burials include my grandfather's sisters, one Mary who died in 1840 another sister, Nancy, (Cameron) Jones who died in 1879 and three of my grandfather's children who died when very young, Henry, Alfred and Margaret, who died between 1850 and 1860.

To Alexander and Susannah (Beavers) Cameron were born the following children:

I shall now attempt to give a brief history of each one of great grandfather's children's marriages.

Christain Cameron - married to Esther Core about 1845. To this union were born eight children.

John Cameron - My grandfather married Sarah Ferneau 1850. To this union were born 10 children:

Alexander - was married twice. His first marriage was to Cynthia weaver who died in 1862. To this union were born two children:

Daniel - married Anna Wickersham. To this union were born three sons and two daughters:

Mary - died when about two years old.

I shall now try to give a brief setting of my grandfather John Cameron's marriage to Sarah Ferneau in 1850. My grandmother, "Aunt Sadie" as so many called her, was one of five daughters and four sons of John H. and Christena (Freshour) Ferneau. The Ferneaus were an early pioneer family of French and Scotch-Irish descent who settled just east of Bainbridge about the same time that my great great grandfather, Daniel and his wife Catherine had settled there. Several of the Ferneaus had served in the Revolution and were true Virginia settlers and thus entitled to lans in the Virginia Military District. One of the Ferneaus, Daniel by name, had built a beautiful home adjacent to Nathaniel Massie's home on the morainic plateau west of Bainbridge. One of these structures is still standing. The other was destroyed by fire a few years ago. They were very outstanding homes located not far from the entrance to the "Seven Caves". The Ferneau family names were prominent in early Ohio history. I only mention a few of grandmother's sisters married names to tell you whom they represented.

Millie (Ferneau) Wilson, Teeny (Ferneau) Ogle, one was married to a William Greenfield. I have not a story of any of the Ferneau sons except to say that one was in the Civil War and one, a cousin of father, was known by the name of Mahlon Ferneau. He also had a beautiful home just a few miles southwest of Bainbridge. In my early boyhood days, I distinctly remember that peafowls and Shetland ponies were abundant on this farm. Grandmother Ferneau's old home was near where Paint Creek crosses route 50 about two miles east of Bainbridge.

My grandmother, as a young lady, was one of the belles of the neighborhood, with dark hair and dark eyes. She was a very vivacious young lady. She probably could have had many a young man of the neighborhood but she chose John Cameron or "Little John" as he was frequently called. My grandfather at an early age was one of the outstanding young farms of the Beech Flats area. Grandfather and grandmother went to housekeeping in an older home on the paternal homestead. Then just after the Civil War, grandfather built a substantial mansion, as it would be called in those days on a morainic knoll overlooking the entire farm. This house was one of the outstanding homes of that early day. It was a frame house of mid-Victorian style with about ten large rooms. It contained two long halls, one upstairs and one down. The rooms were quite large and the ceilings were very high which made some of them hard to heat in the wintertime. The kitchen and dining room was 16 x 22 feet in length and contained one of the largest dining tables I have ever seen. The doors of this home were hand made of black walnut by a mill wright by the name of Slater and it is said that in that early day the doors alone cost grandfather $700. Grandmother was a gracious queen of this home and worshipped her six living sons and one daughter. This old home still stands overlooking a farm that in the early days of the pioneer marked one of the best examples of environmental adjustment I have ever seen. This far, at the time of grandfather's death, embraced about 600 acres most were tillable. Some portions on the south side of Brush Creek which flowed through it and adjacent to Shephards Mount were better adapted to grazing and orchard. The farm had three orchards, a sugar maple lot of about ten acres, a tile mill, a shingle mill, two fishponds filled with German carp at one time, a sorghum press and granary, besides the longest barn in southern Ohio. This barn was well over 200 feet in length and housed cattle, horses, and much hay. The farm also included a smokehouse and an icehouse where ice from the pond was stored for summer use. Yes, they even had ice cream when I was a youngster and believe me it was home made with plenty of eggs and milk and cream. This farm was one of the best examples of diversified farming in the countryside because cattle, hogs, corn and wheat were the principal commodities. At one time, moreover, the farm had 500 head of sheep on it.

In addition to the new house, there were two other homes on the farm when I was a boy. Grandfather often gave his sons a start in their farming operations on this farm. The tile mill turned out many tile for the farms of the countryside. He always produced about 30 or 40 head of fat prime steers which would weigh about 2000 pounds when they were three years old. Grandfather never made less than three barrels of sorghum along with several gallons of maple syrup. He never butchered less than a dozen head of hogs and a beef or two during the winter and maybe a sheep or two during threshing time. Yes, I can almost taste that fine center cut from a ham that grandmother would give me when I ambled down from our modest home a few hundred yards away near Iron Mountain. Sometimes she would give me a generous slice of homemade bread with plenty of butter and sorghum on it. No, I'll never forget both of these fine Ohio pioneers.

I probably could have said as much for Uncle Chris of Uncle Alex's farm but I just happen to remember this farm better.

I remember the many Christmas visits my brother Arch and I had at the old homestead and how grandfather would bring up a bushel of apples for an evening of munching. We would eat apples, tell stories and jokes until time to retire when grandfather would take up the family Bible and read a lesson for us and offer prayer for our blessings and safekeeping, then we would retire. No one was ever turned away from John Cameron's home who really needed help. He, along with Uncle Chris, were staunch pillars in the local U. B. Church and quite frequently entertained the preachers.

An early Irish Linen peddler would often stop and stay three days with grandfather. He was a bitter democrat and grandfather a "black" republican and they would get arguing about the Civil War after the evening meal. They would often pound the table to emphasize their respective points and you would think they were really angry but after it was all over they would shake hands and be friends again. He would give grandmother some piece of linen for his keep.

Another traveling "hobo", somewhat eccentric or demented would often stop and grandmother would feed him well. His name was "Joe Chambers". He would frequently have fifty newspapers with him. He was not very clean but the linen peddler; Thomas Mattimore was always clean in his habits.

No story of our early pioneering ancestors would be complete without a few descriptive facts of this beautiful part of Ohio, sometimes called the "Little Yellowstone of Ohio" by those who perchance passed through it. Here such settlers as the Camerons, Ferneaus, Wilson, McCoppin, Spargur, Watts, Rockhold, Eubanks, Stultz, Tener, McCoys, Head, Martins, Moores, Jones, West, Little, Sharps, Greenfields, Slater, Sylvesters, Bakers, Kelleys, Bruney, Keisley, Caplinger, Estels, Wisecups, and scores of others came as early settlers. Their names indicate their origin and their integrity. So rapidly did this part of Ohio settle after the Indian Peace Treaty of 1794 that by 1810 Ross County, which included what is most of Pike County now, had a population of 15,000.

The last feeble advance of the ice sheet of some 30,000 years ago had covered the Beech Flats and had smoothed some hill lands so that farming was a successful business along with lumbering.

The sturdy character of these people helped to make Oho the great state it is today. They served their communities as useful citizens in many ways. They shared with their neighbors the joys as well as the hardships of life. No hungry or worthy person was turned from their doors. I quote from an obituary of my grandfather written by his nephew, Joseph Wilson, nearly sixty years ago. "He was a worker and a thinker, methodical and painstaking in all he did, his whole course of life was marked with the same close application and persistent industry. His mind was analytical, his grasp of a plan providing ways and means, rapid and comprehensive; his powers of discrimination great. He was unostentatious in all things, singularly devoid of pretense, simple of character, of gentle disposition and greatly beloved in the family circle. Independent so far as material wealth can confer that condition, he yet bore himself with an air of humility that was conclusive evidence that he realized in the largest sense how dependent we are upon each other in this life for that self-sacrificing friendship and kindly sympathy, without which, to noble minds, life would be a barren waste. An honest and successful private citizen, a faithful and wise public servant he had served his township for more than 30 years as trustee. He was a true and humble Christian gentleman. What higher econium could any man desire?"

So close were grandfather and grandmother in their family relationship that at his death she could not realize that he was gone. She said, "Why did not John tell me he was going to die?" She was never herself after his death. While she survived him for several years, the care of grandmother in her final years was very trying.

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