Glenbuchat Heritage

139 Cameron Family Sunnybrae

The above series of photos are taken from a photocopy kindly provided by Ken Cruickshank

The Photos Show

1. Ann Chree nee Farquharson outside the annexe to Sunnybrae cottage.
Note the thatched roof.

2, John Cameron with his mother Ann

3. James Davidson of the Glenbuchat Shop


The following is an article about the history of John Cameron written by the late Alan Cameron and given to Ken Cruickshank in the 1990’s to be used to preserve the history of Glenbuchat.


Alan Camerons family history of his relatives from Sunnybrae Farm Glenbuchat - written in the late 1990 s

John Cameron
Born 1886 Died 1954

From various correspondents and sources, I have pieced together the following information concerning John. It appears that he worked at the "Mains of Kildrummy" farm and the farmer was called Ingram. (Kildrummy is located only a few miles from Glenbuchat.). John fell for the farmer's daughter Margaret but her parents felt she was "marrying beneath her position" and did not want her to live in the same parish with John.

As a result, John and Margaret emigrated to Canada in 1908 and were married there. They had one son Peter Ingram but Margaret died during pregnancy with a second child. I do not think the second child survived but in time I may be able to throw some light on that. I am told that Peter Ingram was I7 when his mother died and Gordon Turner says that he was about 5 years older than our cousin Peggy This would suggest that he was born around 1912 and therefore his mother’s death would have been about 1929. Peggy told me that Ingram had a lonely life after his mother died and eventually, he went to live in Edmonton, Alberta. Nothing is known of him, though unsuccessful efforts have been made to trace him. He may of course have died by now. Peggy also told me that Margaret and her other cousin Ethel (Mother of Gordon Turner) were both great pianists.

John joined the Police Force in Edmonton when he first went out to Canada and was there for three years before going to Vancouver and joining the police force there in November 1911. The police archives in Vancouver show that he was 5ft 11 ins. and 157 lbs at the time. He was promoted to detective on November 1st 1918 and eventually became Chief Constable of New Westminster (Part of Vancouver) Police and served with them until he was appointed Chief Constable of Vancouver City Police Force.

John was a great all-round athlete and the photograph on an adjacent page confirms this. I hope to make some enquiries in due course about his sporting activities and may contact the sports section of a Vancouver newspaper to see if they have any records in their archives. John married a second time to a woman with a family of her own. I have no details of this except that his stepdaughter called Campbell who was referred to as “Deedy" ??, came over to the UK in the late thirties and stopped one night with my family when we lived in Windy Nook on Tyneside. Molly Cameron says that Deedy went to live with Granny Cameron at Sunnybrae for a while.

The circumstances of her visit are rather peculiar but I cannot find any further details. My brother Adrian was in the Merchant Navy and his ship called at Vancouver in 1946. He visited John and was very kindly received. Unfortunately, but understandably, Adrian cannot recall the visit in any detail, as it was over 50 years ago. John gave Adrian one of his silver cups awards and it was in our family for a lot of years before it was somehow lost. During our visit to Canada in June 1997, we visited a public library in Vancouver and whilst time was limited, we managed to find references to John in a book entitled "Vancouver City Police" and I took photo copies of pages in which he featured. The photo copies are not good enough to reproduce so I have re-typed the text which I feel is of great interest and also quite revealing. I was aware that at some time in the earlier part of his police career he had been involved in a shooting incident in which he lost an eye but you will see that this is now clarified in great detail.
Alan Camerons extracts from a book entitled "Vancouver City Police” about his uncle, John Cameron originally from Sunnybrae Farm Glenbuchat.

On March 1917, Chief Malcolm MacLennan was shot to death.

The case had started innocently enough when a couple renting a suite above a Chinese grocery store on East Georgia Street fell two months behind with their rent. When the owner and his agent went to evict the tenant, they were threatened by a man with a shotgun. Calling the police, the two men returned with two detectives and a uniformed constable. They knocked on the door and called on the occupants, Bob Tait and a woman named Frankie Russell, to come out peacefully. The response was a shotgun blast fired through the door. The constable, John Cameron, was blinded in one eye as was the apartment owner. One of the detectives was also injured in the face.

Returning to the street, they flagged down a passing motorist and loaded Cameron off to hospital. While the injured detective, Ernest Russell, was calling the Police Station for reinforcements, an 8-year-old boy, George Robb, who was walking along the street, was shot and killed by a shot fired from the suite occupied by Bob Tait. When reinforcements arrived, the police laid siege to the house. Chief MacLennan took charge of the operation and led an assault into the suite where calls for the occupants to surrender met with no response. As the policemen burst in they found that Tait had barricaded himself and the woman in a bedroom and he immediately started shooting. Beaten back, the policemen withdrew, only to find that the Chief was not with them.

Re-entering, they saw the Chiefs body in the hallway but were unable to reach it due to the heavy firing from the barricaded room. For the next four hours the siege continued, with all attempts to enter the suite being beaten back. Finally, with sulphur pots having been prepared to smoke the gunman out (a suggestion to blow up the building with dynamite having been considered and rejected), three constables asked if they could have one more try at getting the Chief out. Told to proceed, two covered the room with their revolvers while the third crawled along the hallway and dragged the Chief out. It was found that he had been shot in the head and that death must have been instantaneous. As the sulphur pots were about to be lit, there was the sound of a shot from the barricaded room followed by shout of surrender from the woman. It was then discovered that Tait had committed suicide and the siege ended.


Further extract from the book.: -

Chief Constable of Vancouver City, C.E. Edgett resigned at the end of 1933 and the job of Chief went to John Cameron. Cameron was the Chief Constable of New Westminster at the time and he was the same Cameron who had lost an eye on the day in 1917.

Alan Camerons Family History written late 1990 s


When grandfather Daniel died in 1914, George took over the running of the farm. However, grandmother Ann outlived her husband by many years and died at the age of 89 on the 18th January 1942. Whilst obviously I never knew my grandfather, I have vivid memories of "Granny" who lived on at Sunnybrae as a widow, in a little cottage attached to the main farmhouse. During the school holidays each year when our family stayed in the Glen, we children spent many happy hours playing around the farm so we saw quite a lot of Granny.

She lived in clean but almost primitive conditions. There was just the one room in the cottage with a bare stone flagged floor and a table plus one or two chairs and I think an easy chair or rocker. No doubt there was some form of cupboard or dresser but I cannot be sure. I do remember a bed at one end of the room which had large drawers underneath and a curtain which could be pulled across to keep out the winter cold. There was a wide fireplace and a peat fire which had to cope with heating and cooking. Hens often roved around the floor but they seemed to be tolerated by Granny. She was in her early 80's during the period of my recall and I remember her dressed always in black clothes and her hair tied back in a bun. Her face was very craggy and she needed a stick for lameness of some sort but she was a tough old soul and chopped her own firewood outside the cottage door.

She was very independent, though I am sure towards the end of her life George and his family would have seen to her needs. I do recall that she was very deaf and conversations were conducted on both sides by a lot of shouting. Granny always had a supply of "Pan Drops" (strong peppermints) and we were usually treated to one on our visits. Uncle George became the farmer at Sunnybrae after Grandfather Daniel died and of course with the beginning of the First World War the family at Sunnybrae was reduced even further by my father Robert joining the Army, and the death of old Mrs Chree. George and his wife Jeannie lived at the farm from that time until sometime in the 1950's. They had four children. Ethel the eldest, followed by Florence, Ian and Maisie.

Ian married Molly Forbes during the thirties and they subsequently took over the running of the farm from George and Jeannie. I have many happy memories of Ian in particular as he worked at Sunnybrae during the thirties. He was a cheerful young man and he and his sister Masie always made us children welcome. Strangely I cannot recall his wife Molly though she must have been at the farm later in the decade. However, in starting on this record I sought information about living relatives and was delighted to find that Molly was still hale and hearty and living in Aberdeen. Ian died quite a few years ago from cancer, so she is a widow. We exchanged several letters over a year or two and in August this year (1998) Jean and I visited Aberdeen and spent a marvellous afternoon with Molly, talking over memories of the Glen.

She provided me with lots of additional information on the family history and loaned me a booklet (Glenbuchat Yesterdays) containing many photographs of Glenbuchat and its residents at the turn of the century. As a result, I am busy now updating what I had already written and you will have seen the newly obtained photographs in previous pages. Early in our correspondence Molly gave me the address of Gordon Turner, the eldest son of Ethel. He lives in the town of Salmon Arm, British Columbia, Canada. I wrote to Gordon and as a result received a great deal of information concerning the family history of my uncles and cousins who made their homes in Canada during the earlier part of this century. Through Gordon I also established contact with Peggy Henderson who is the daughter of my late Uncle Charles. Peggy is a widow now and lives on her own in Vancouver. We spoke on the telephone and exchanged letters and it has been marvellous to discover a relation I never knew existed and who is providing such a great link with the past. In the same way contact was also made with a grandson of Uncle Charles who lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He is Charles Stuart Cameron and his mother Marjorie is the widow of Danny, son of Uncle

Charles and brother of Peggy. From that point on we have been in touch by letter, telephone, and internet "E-Mail". In June 1979 we went out to Canada on a twelve-week tour of Vancouver and the Rockies and met them in person together with many members of their families. It was a holiday we will never forget, as not only did we have a great time meeting our new found relatives but had a marvellous tour of their wonderful country. Auntie Jeannie died at Sunnybrae farm on the 18th of June 1948 aged 60 and Uncle George died at Greenstyle farm, Kildrummy on the 21st September 1959 aged 77. Some years prior to that, Ian and Molly left Sunnybrae to farm at Kildrummy a few miles away from Glenbuchat, so ending the Cameron era at Sunnybrae.

The following are inscriptions copied from gravestones in Aberdeenshire cemeteries, which are linked very closely with the details related in this and previous pages.

You will note the use of wives’ maiden names, which is common to most Scottish memorial stones. The first one is from a very large and quite imposing nemoral stone in Glenbuchat cemetery, which was obviously erected initially as a Chree family stone .

"Erected by Ann Farquharson in memory of her husband -
Willian Chree Farmer, Sunnybrae. Died l8th March 1900
Aged77 -Years.

Also, the above Ann Farquharson who died at Sunnybrae
18th December 1915. Aged 86 Years
And Daniel Cameron Farmer, Sunnybrae beloved husband
of Anne Chree Died 31stJuly 1914. Aged 69 years-
Also, the above Anne Chree who died 18th January 1942
Aged 89 years"

Another interesting four-sided stone in Glenbuchat cemetery relates to John Chree and his family. John was a brother of William above.

"In loving memory of Annie Chree. Youngest daughter of John Chree who
died at Sunnybrae 11th February 1896, aged 23 years.
Also, of John Chree who died at Taree, New South Wales 31st July 1885, aged 29 years.

Also, their father John Chree, Merchant, Sunnybrae, who died 28th July 1900,
aged 75, and his wife, Catherine Innes who died at Mill, Glenbuchat, 3lst December
1918, aged 86 years.
Also, of his son Alexander who died at Newmill, Foveran, 19th August 1908, aged 50 years.
Also, their daughter Mary Dawson who died at Newmill, Foveran 12th March
1915, aged 48 years.
Also, his oldest son Robert Chree who died at the Mill of Glenbuchat on 3rd
October 1915, aged 63 Years.

,b>Chree Family Details

William Chruie (Chree) 1779–1855
Birth 02 May 1779 Glenbucket,
Death 14 Nov 1855 Sunnybrae, Glenbuchat,
Parents
William Chruie 1749–1820
Margaret Elizabeth Davidson 1751–1817
Spouse
Mary Dawson 1796–1863
Children
James Chree 1820–1873
William Chree 1822–1900
John Chree 1824–1900
Rev. Charles Chree 1827–1893
Mary Chree 1829–1889
Robert Chree 1831–1843
George Chree 1833–1910
Alexander Finlater Chree 1834–1916
Peter Chree 1836–1886
Ann Margaret Chree 1839–1857

William Chree 1822–1900
Birth 18 Nov 1822 Glenbucket,
Death 28 Mar 1900 Sunnybrae, Glenbuchat,
Parents
William Chruie (Chree) 1779–1855
Mary Dawson 1796–1863
Spouse
Ann Farquharson 1829–1915
Children
Anne Chree 1853–1942

Anne Chree 1853–1942
Birth 27 Aug 1853 Glenbuchat,
Death 18 Jan 1942
Parents
William Chree 1822–1900
Ann Farquharson 1829–1915
Spouse
Daniel Cameron 1846–1914
Children
James Cameron 1876–1913
Ann Isabella Cameron 1877–1885
William Cameron 1878–1960
Alexander Cameron 1880–1958
George Cameron 1882–1959
Daniel Cameron 1883–1941
John Cameron 1886–
Charles Chree Cameron 1888–1934
Robert Garden Cameron 1893–1969