The Camerons

Scope and content:

The Camerons, like the Dunlops, were Scots, and the two families were once connected by marriage as well as being associated in tobacco manufacturing. The Camerons came to Petersburg in the 1840s. There were three brothers (Alexander, George, and William) and two sisters, one of whom married Robert Dunlop. The brothers obtained positions with David Dunlop, and Alexander Cameron advanced to a partnership. In 1858 they founded the firm of William Cameron & Brother at Petersburg that continued in independent existence until 1903. Their activities expanded to Richmond where they established Alexander Cameron Co. in 1865 and Cameron & Cameron in 1889. These businesses likewise continued to 1903 when all the Cameron companies were absorbed by British-American. A significant part of the Cameron enterprises were the firms that they began establishing in Australia in the 1870s, there eventually being plants at Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, and Brisbane. Their trade was strong in Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and other British dependencies. Until the creation of the American Tobacco Co., the combined Cameron properties were probably the largest tobacco manufacturing enterprises operated by Americans. Information about them is in: biographies of Alexander Cameron (1834-1915) in: The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, VII, 321-322; the Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography, IV, 259-260 (and of George Cameron in the same work, IV, 154-155); and in the New York Times, Feb. 4, 1915, p. 9. See also Joseph Clarke Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America (New York, 1949), p. 131. The Tobacco Collection includes one or more items from the Cameron companies.

Contents

Using These Materials