Person Page - 44

Jane (STRON) Cameron

• Father: Fear Cameron of Stronlea¹ b. c 1725

• Relationship: 4th great-grandmother of Donald James MacFarlane

The ancestry chart of Archibald MacFarlane (ID # 34) is presented because he unites the ancestry of both his parents. If an individual appears more than once in Archibald's chart this indicates descent from the individual in more than one line. By clicking on the each instance (i.e. Ancestry of Archibald MacFarlane (#5)) each line of descent will be shown.

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• Birth*: Jane was born circa 1745 in Scotland.²
• Marriage*: She married Dougald Cameron circa 1770.³
• Biography*: Jane was the daughter of "Fear Stronhlea" sic.
  
       A worn gold ring was pressed into the hand of a young woman as she prepared to leave Fort William, Scotland, almost two centuries ago. As a piece of jewellery it may not have had a high value but it was faithfully passed down to daughters and granddaughters in Antigonish and Inverness counties.
  
       The young woman who received the ring was Jane Gillies, daughter of Gillies Gillies and Mary Cameron. She was born in Morar in the west coast highlands and named for her grandmother Jane Cameron. When she was still a young child, her mother died and she, along with her brother Duncan, was sent to live with that same grandmother in Achintore, near the port town of Fort William.
  
       Sometime around 1820 Jane Cameron pressed the ring into her beloved granddaughter's hand. The past must have weighed heavily on her shoulders as she watched the younger Jane and her brother leave, for they were following in the steps of their aunt and uncles. The family exodus began in 1801 when the eldest son, Ewen, left with his wife and young children to pioneer in Nova Scotia. Within the next few years the only surviving daughter, Ann, and her brothers John and Lauchie also left for Nova Scotia. By the early 1820s, Jane Cameron's youngest son, also named Ewen, sailed with his wife for Ontario. Whether Jane Cameron's last goodbye was to her grandchildren or her youngest son is hard to establish.
  
       At each departure from Fort William, Jane Cameron gave her blessing, always with the certainty there would be no reunions with those she held dear. No daughter would share her burdens, no stalwart sons would ease her old age and no grandchildren would provide her company. In giving her granddaughter the ring, Jane Cameron asked only that she be remembered.
  
       Jane's birthplace has come down through the family as Stron-a-Li and its physical features match a place now known as The Strone. To get there you take the Road to the Isles west from Fort William as far as Corpach and drive north about four miles.
  
       Jane was born a Cameron about 1750 in a part of the highlands dominated by the powerful Clan Cameron just one generation earlier. It is likely her family fought among the Jacobite forces at Culloden in 1745. As the angry clansmen retreated from a disastrous battle it took the intervention of Chief Donald Cameron, known as the Gentle Lochiel, to prevent them looting and sacking Glasgow.
  
       When Jane Cameron first married it was to Dougald Cameron, a Presbyterian like herself. They settled at Achintore, not far from her home, in the parish of Killmallie. They had six children by the time Dougald took sick and died. With the economic survival of her family at stake, Jane remarried within a short time. Her second husband was Lachlan Cameron and with him she had another son who, like her first son, was named Ewen.
  
       When he was old enough the older Ewen went to work as a shepherd for a Catherine Gillies who had a farm at the head of Loch Morar. In time he married Catherine Gillies' daughter, Margaret. It was a mixed marriage as the Gillies' family were devout Catholics. A grandson of Margaret Gillies wrote a romantic account of the marriage, saying Margaret's parents were strongly opposed to the union but young love prevailed. If there was serious opposition it must have come from Catherine Gillies as her husband was already dead. She may have opposed the marriage on religious grounds but she may also have felt that Ewen Cameron's economic prospects were poor.
  
       Perhaps it was Margaret Gillies who proposed emigrating, as her mother's sister and four brothers had settled in Antigonish County in 1791 with another uncle following a decade later. Or it may have been that that the young family was persuaded by other Morar area families who were also finding it difficult to support themselves and their children. Whatever the case, by 1801, Ewen Cameron had become a Catholic and sailed with his wife and four children to Pictou. They stayed first with Margaret's uncles at Dunmaglass, Antigonish County, before moving further east to South Side Antigonish Harbor where Margaret delivered a son who later claimed to be the first white child born in the area. Within a few years they moved further inland to pioneer on the South River near St. Andrew's.
  
       Brothers John and Lauchie Cameron emigrated together a few years later and it is likely their sister Ann sailed with them. All were single. John and Lauchie settled at South Side Antigonish Harbour where Ewen had preceded them. John, who became widely known as Red John Cameron, courted his neighbour Christy MacDonald who was born in Moidart. She was a Catholic and he converted. They walked from the harbour to Arisag to be married by a Catholic priest in 1809. Within a few years Red John and Christy also moved inland to a farm on the South River.
  
       Lauchie Cameron remained at the harbour and married Catherine MacGillivray, a first cousin of Ewen's wife, Margaret. She and her family came to the South River from Arnipol, near Arisaig, Scotland, about the same time the Camerons left. Catherine MacGillivray was a Catholic and like his brothers before him, Lauchie Cameron converted.
       Ann Cameron may have kept house for her brothers at the harbour for a time but she soon married a James Murdock and moved with him to Oyster Ponds, later known as St. Francis Harbor, Guysborough County. They raised a family there.
  
       Allen Cameron was with a regiment in Ireland when his younger brothers John and Lauchie came out. While in Ireland, he married Janet McIvor, a clergyman's daughter, and had two children there with a third born later in Scotland. Allen and family left Scotland for Nova Scotia about 1812.They settled at Springfield, Antigonish County, and had two more sons before Janet died. When Allen married a second time, it was to Mary MacDonald, a widow with the maiden name of Gillies.
  
       Ewen the Younger, the son of Jane Cameron's second marriage, remained in Scotland longer than his half-sister and half-brothers. He was already an ordained Presbyterian minister by the time he and his wife Ellen left Fort William for Ontario in the early 1820s.
  
       All indications are that the Camerons were a poor family but at least some of them were able to read and write. It may be that Jane, herself, had those skills. Her great-grandson, William Cameron, who wrote Drummer on Foot, an invaluable history of the pioneer families on the South River in Antigonish County, noted in his work that he had seen envelopes of letters sent by Jane to her son Ewen.
  
       In total, Jane Cameron sent a daughter and five sons across the sea. The four sons in Antigonish County fathered 34 children while Ewen the Younger was father to at least four children. The number of children in Ann Cameron Murdock's family is unknown but in each family there was a daughter named Jane for her grandmother across the sea in Achintore.
       Duncan Gillies, grandson of Jane Cameron, settled at East Bay, Cape Breton, and had a family of at least five.
  
       Jane Gillies, the granddaughter who received the gold ring on her leaving, married Alexander MacDonald, the son of a man her uncle Red John had purchased property from. She lived for at least part of her marriage at Springfield, Antigonish County, and had 12 children. It was to her daughter Jane that she handed down her grandmother's gold ring.
       According to William Cameron, Jane MacDonald, also named for her great-grandmother in Scotland, married Angus MacDougall. When she was contacted in Margaree Harbor in 1913, the ring was still in her possession.. What became of the treasured ring after that is a mystery. The information on Jane MacDonald MacDougall is not as clear as most of Cameron's writing, making it difficult to pick up the trace.
       Most prominent among the grandchildren of Jane Cameron is John Cameron, bishop of Arichat and later Antigonish from 1870 to 1910. He may be best remembered for his partisan politics but Cameron was also a multi-lingual scholar, an able administrator and progressive in his views on education for females.
  
       He was the youngest son of Red John Cameron and Christy MacDonald's eight children. Born in 1827, he was baptized by Bishop William Fraser who had known his grandmother in the highlands. Fraser's first charge as a young priest was all the missions of Lochaber with headquarters in Fort William. The Catholics were few in number and the missions were scattered but Fraser, who spent 10 years in the area before joining his family who had settled in Nova Scotia, was guaranteed a welcome at the home of Jane Cameron. Years later, whenever he met up with one of her sons in Antigonish County, he was inclined to remember, "Many a good drink of milk I myself got from poor one-eyed Jane."
  
       Young John Cameron was sent to Rome at the age of 17 to study for the priesthood. It was 1844 and his father charged him with finding out whether Jane Cameron was still alive. He may have harboured the hope that his son could journey to Scotland to meet the old lady.
  
       Several attempts were made to contact relatives in Fort William before the young John learned his grandmother had died in 1842. When he received the news of his mother's death, Red John asked his son to try to find out if she had converted to Catholicism. The son was unable to get an answer to his father's question.
  
       There is an account in an early history of Antigonish County contending Jane's first husband Dougald converted to Catholicism on his death bed. The story even shows up in a biography of Bishop John Cameron. It goes so far as to name the priest who performed the conversion, adding the same priest received Red John into the Catholic Church in Nova Scotia.
       At least some branches of the family are sceptical that Dougald ever converted. Certainly, most of his children were likely too young at his death to have witnessed it. In Drummer on Foot, William Cameron notes it was never spoken of among the descendents of the older brother Ewen. Jane MacDonald MacDougall is also quoted in Drummer on Foot as doubting it ever took place.
  
            If Jane Cameron was convinced her family would fare better by leaving Scotland, as family tradition maintains, she was proved accurate. The siblings were hardworking and resourceful and became prominent in their communities. When the people of St. Andrew's were determined to have a Gaelic-speaking priest in the early 1820s Ewen Cameron was one of their spokesmen.
  
       Red John Cameron eventually owned what was considered the most prosperous farm in Antigonish County. From his earliest days he farmed by day and practiced his trade as a weaver in the evenings. His family kept at least one servant.
  
       Lauchie Cameron had a son who reportedly sailed the world before settling down in Australia but most of the Cameron grandchildren spread out over Antigonish and Guysborough Counties and east to Cape Breton. The grandchildren included farmers, blacksmiths, teachers and magistrates. The great-grandchildren included doctors, lawyers and judges as well as priests and nuns in large numbers.
  
       Ann Cameron Murdock, who had not married a Catholic, converted before her death. Her brother Red John, who maintained a correspondence with his half-brother, informed him of the death, taking pains to assure him she had received all the rites of the "true church."
  
       If it was an argumentative approach to take with a Presbyterian minister, it was the only one Red John knew. He embraced his faith with the stereotypical zeal of the convert, reasoning that because his faith was true his brother's must be false.
  
       It is clear from letters exchanged many years later between Bishop Cameron of Antigonish and his aged uncle Ewen that the tension over religious differences in the family still simmered. The bishop, like his father before him, believed Catholicism was the one true faith. The aged Presbyterian was perhaps more pragmatic. He told the bishop if not for Margaret Gillies, the Catholic girl the older Ewen Cameron had married, the lot of them would have remained good Presbyterians.
  
       The bishop must have been remembering his father's worries over Jane Cameron's faith at the time of her death when he wrote to his uncle in 1876, apparently raising the possibility of her conversion.
  
       "It is true my father joined the Roman Church through a tiff he had with his minister, but my mother never did. She always belonged to the Presbyterian denomination," Ewen Cameron told the bishop in a letter.
  
       Finally, the bishop had the answer his father sought more than three decades earlier. Red John had succeeded better than most in a rugged new country. He was 40 years out of Scotland by the time he learned of his mother's death. He had fished for his breakfast and cleared land, tree by tree, in the early days. He had chosen a strong and steady wife, adopted a faith and raised a fine family that provided him with 71 grandchildren. He lived into his nineties, proud he had given his brightest son to the Catholic church; yet, his greatest fear was that the gates of heaven could not swing open wide enough to receive poor one-eyed Presbyterian Jane Cameron of Achintore, the mother who had asked only to be remembered as he, his sister, his brothers, his half-brother and the grandchildren she had raised, sailed irretrievably away from her.²