Bennehan Cameron (1854 - 1925)

Born 9 Sep 1854 in Fairntosh, Durham, North Carolina, United States

Ancestors

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Biography

Bennehan Cameron, the only surviving son of Paul C. Cameron, was born at Fairntosh, the country residence of the Camerons for a century. The home was built by Judge Duncan Cameron. It was originally in Orange County, but now in Durham County, along the Enoe River and by the Oconeechee Indians, who lived near the present site of Hillsboro.

Bennehan became a student at the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington in 1871. He graduated on the 4th of July, 1875. He was tendered the position of commandant of the corps of cadets and of professor of tactics, ordnance and gunnery in the Kentucky Military Institute at Boiling Green.

He became a law student of his uncle, William K. Ruffin. Admitted to the bar in 1877, Cameron worked in the office of the law firm of Graham & Ruffin at Hillsboro, but circumstances led him to relinquish his practice of the law, and he took charge of the plantation at Stagville, near Fairntosh, following in the footsteps of his father.

Cameron married Miss Sallie T. Mayo on 28 Oct 1891, a daughter of Mr. P. H. Mayo, who is descended from one of Virginia's oldest and best-known families.

Cameron was the owner of both Fairntosh and Stagville plantations, which for a period of one hundred and forty years was the property of his ancestors, forming one of the most important and interesting estates in North Carolina. He was instrumental in the organization of the First National Bank of Durham and of the Morehead Banking Company, of which he was one of the original directors. He also became interested in phosphate lands and in the cultivation of orange groves in Florida. He was also a director of the Rocky Mount Mills.

He was a director of the North Carolina Railroad. He helped build the Union Depot at Raleigh and the Caraleigh Railroad branch. He was also a promoter of the Oxford and Clarksville Railroad, the Lynchburg and Durham Railroad, the Durham and Northern Railroad, and the Oxford and Coast Line Railroad.

He was appointed by Governor Fowle as an aide to represent North Carolina on the staff of Major-General Schofield at the Inauguration Centennial of President George Washington at New York on April 30, 1889, when 100,000 troops were in line. By appointment of Governor Holt he represented North Carolina on the Military Committee of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago.

Descended from an illustrious ancestry, Colonel Cameron is a hereditary member of the North Carolina Society of the Cincinnati. representing Major Clement Read Nash, who was killed at the Battle of Yorktown, and he is also entitled to represent Captain Thomas Amis of Halifax. In the Cincinnati Colonel Cameron is assistant treasurer, and he was a delegate from North Carolina to attend, at Philadelphia, in 1897, the unveiling of the monument erected by the society to Washington as its first president. And he has attended as a delegate the triennial meetings of the General Society at New York, at Hartford and in 1905 at Richmond. On the latter occasion the guest of honor, both at its banquet at Richmond and on the trip to Yorktown, was Monsieur Jusserand, the French Ambassador to the United States, who represented the French Society of the Cincinnati. In the famous old Moore house at Yorktown, Colonel Cameron recalled that in 1881, at the centennial celebration of Cornwallis's surrender, he drank punch with General Rochambeau and General Boulanger, members of the French society, on the very spot where the articles of British surrender were signed. On that occasion, also, resolutions presented by Colonel Cameron in respect to the memory of General Fitzhugh Lee were adopted, after an eloquent eulogium pronounced upon that fine officer by Colonel Cameron.

In his political affiliations Colonel Cameron is a Democrat, and he has always been influential in the councils of his party, but he has never sought political preferment and has no taste for political life. He has that manly and independent spirit which cannot be brought to bend and fawn in order to obtain the objects of even a laudable ambition.

In all of his multifarious relations Colonel Cameron has not omitted to give encouragement to education. He is chairman of the North Carolina branch of the Society of Alumni of the Virginia Military Institute, and is a trustee of the University of North Carolina, and secured the establishment of ten scholarships at that institution by the Paul C. Cameron heirs, and otherwise he has manifested his hearty sympathy in the general cause of education. When it was proposed, in 1905, to elect a president of the University of Virginia, Colonel Cameron recommended to the trustees of that institution Dr. E. A. Alderman, a North Carolinian, urging that the first president of that famous institution should be a Southern man; and he had the satisfaction of seeing Dr. Alderman chosen, and of attending at his installation.

In like manner Colonel Cameron manifests an interest in all public matters that appertain to the welfare of his community and' to the advantage of society, and a spirit of beneficence leads to a generous liberality in promoting such objects.

The social side of Colonel Cameron's life has been cast in most fortunate lines. His mother, Annie Ruffin, a daughter of Chief Justice Ruffin, moved in a charming circle of relatives and friends, amid elegance, refinement and culture, and these influences were most happy in their effects upon her children, and Colonel Cameron grew up not merely the manly man, but the courteous, polished gentleman.

On the night of August 27, 1891, one of the most fatal railroad wrecks in the history of this country occurred on the Western North Carolina Railroad near Statesville. Of the nearly one hundred passengers, he was the only one who was not killed. He rescued many fellow-passengers.

Sources

• http://genealogytrails.com/ncar/durham/bio_cameron_bennehan.html

• William Arba Ellis, ed., Norwich University, 1819-1911: Her History, Her Graduates, Her Roll of Honor (Montpelier, Vermont: The Capital City Press, 1911), 2:77.