Roderick Cameron

Sir Roderick William Cameron (July 25, 1825 - October 19, 1900) was a Canadian and American businessman noted for co-founding the R. W. Cameron and Company shipping line in New York City, as well as for his role as an official representative of Canada and Australia at several international exhibitions during the 1870s and 1880s.

Roderick William Cameron was born in Glengarry County, Upper Canada to Duncan Cameron and Margaret McLeod. He received part of his early education in Williamstown. From about 1839 to 1847 he followed a business career in Hamilton, Ontario being for a time a clerk in a dry-goods business. In 1849, on the recommendation of William Hamilton Merritt, he acted as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., pressing for the passage of a reciprocity treaty with Canada. He also travelled and hunted in the Canadian northwest.

Settling in New York City, where he would live for most of his life, in 1852 Cameron chartered a ship to take passengers and supplies from New York to Australia. He followed this up with 17 other ships in a period of 26 months, consolidating his activities in a shipping company known as the Australian Pioneer Line. After William Augustus Street became his partner in 1870, the name was changed to R. W. Cameron and Company. Concentrating on trade between New York and Australia, with links to New Zealand and England, the firm also traded in Asia and elsewhere. Cargo included American kerosene and agricultural machinery as well as Australian wool. After its early years, the company purchased ships as well as chartering them, but gave up ship-owning about the end of the 19th century.

Thoroughbred racing

Roderick Cameron owned a 130-acre (0.53 km²) estate at Rosebank on the south shore of Staten Island he named Clifton Berley. There, he established a stud farm which, according to his New York Times obituary, was "one of the most noted in the country." For his horse breeding operation, Cameron imported a number of stallions and broodmares from England, notably Leamington, the sire of Iroquois, which in 1881 became the first American horse to win England's prestigious Epsom Derby and St. Leger Stakes. Among the horses bred at Clifton Stud was Glenelg, the 1869 Travers Stakes winner and a four-time Leading sire in North America. [1]

Cameron served as a representative of New South Wales at the Philadelphia exhibition (1876) and at the Paris exposition (1878). He was honorary commissioner from Canada in Australia for the Sydney exhibition (1879–1880) and the Melbourne exhibition (1880–1881) for which the Canadian government recommended a Knighthood that was formally bestowed on June 16, 1883. [2]

Roderick Cameron was a good friend of Canadian Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. In 1885 he was in Ottawa, Ontario for the opening of Parliament of Canada and in June 1891 he attended Sir John A.'s funeral. In March of that year, claiming to have "diplomatic tact with a certain degree of magnetism" and an "intimate personal acquaintance" with American Secretary of State James G. Blaine, he had offered Macdonald his services in Washington to promote reciprocity. Cameron had a summer home at Tadoussac, Quebec, which had been owned by former governor general Lord Dufferin. In the 1880s and 1890s he acquired a large tract of wild land near Lethbridge, Alberta, which became known as the Cameron Ranch. Apart from raising ponies on it, he did not attempt to develop the property.

During the American Civil War he had helped to raise the 79th New York Regiment, a Highland regiment with Clan Cameron connections which had as colonel the brother of U.S. Secretary of War, Simon Cameron. Sir Roderick knew such eminent Americans as Jay Gould, William B. Astor, Jr., and Perry Belmont. He was a dedicated clubman in both New York and London and was an enthusiastic sailor who was a member of the New York Yacht Club. With many friends in England, including the Duke of Albany, as well as in Australia and New Zealand, in his later years he travelled much abroad.

In declining health, Roderick Cameron was visiting England when he died on October 19, 1900 at the Hyde Park Hotel. [3] His body was returned to New York where funeral services were held before being sent to Williamstown, Ontario, Canada for burial. [4] [5]

References

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• October 20, 1900 New York Times obituary for Sir Roderick Cameron