Sir Roderick William Cameron 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.
From 1839 to 1847, he was in business in Hamilton, Ontario, working as a clerk in a dry-goods business. In 1852, during the Australian gold rushes, Cameron chartered a ship to take supplies and passengers from New York to Australia. Shortly thereafter, he added more ships and consolidated his business into a shipping company known as the Australian Pioneer Line. In 1870, he took on William Augustus Street as his partner, and the firm became known as R. W. Cameron and Company. The company maintained success during the Panic of 1857, the American Civil War, and the boom of the Clipper. Cameron generally focused on trade routes between New York and Australia, linking with New Zealand, England, and certain areas in Asia, transporting kerosene and farm machinery as well as Australian wool. By the end of the 1800s, the company no longer owned ships, instead they chartered them, leaving risk elsewhere.
Cameron, although he never renounced his British citizenship, was prominent in New York and Newport society. In 1892, he was included in Ward McAllister's "Four Hundred", purported to be an index of New York's best families, published in The New York Times. Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom. He was a member of the Knickerbocker Club, Metropolitan Club, New York Yacht Club, and Down Town Association.
Personal life
On August 6, 1845, he married Mary Ann Cumming, the daughter of George Cumming of Quebec. She died in 1858; they had no children together. In July 1860, Cameron was married to Anne Fleming Leavenworth, the daughter of Nathan Leavenworth of New York. Together, they were the parents of two sons and five daughters, including:
Margaret Selina Ewen Cameron, who was presented at the British Court in May 1883. She later lived at 1706 18th Street in Washington, D.C. in a home designed by Jules Henri de Sibour.
Duncan Ewen Cameron, who married Mary Glowacki Turnure, the daughter of Lawrence Turnure. After her death, he married Mrs. Mary Crampton Welsh. After their divorce, he married Mrs. Elsie Howland Quinby, in 1926.
Catherine Natalie Cameron, who married Judah Howes Sears, the son of Zenas Sears of Boston, in 1912. She died a few years later and he remarried to Mrs. Nona Newlin Hooper in 1925.
Alice Cameron, who died shortly after his wife.
Anne Fleming Cameron, who married Belmont Tiffany, a son of George and Isabella Perry Tiffany and grandson of Comm. Matthew Calbraith Perry, in June 1895.
Isabell Dorothy Cameron, who died unmarried.
In New York City, Cameron lived at 149 Second Avenue, in Staten Island, he lived at Rosebank, where he had Frederick Law Olmsted design his gardens, and in Canada, he has a home in Tadoussac, Quebec, which had been owned by the former Governor General of Canada, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava. In declining health, Roderick Cameron was visiting England when he died on October 19, 1900, at the Hyde Park Hotel. His body was returned to New York where funeral services were held before being sent to Williamstown, Ontario, Canada for burial. His estate was worth approximately $250,000 upon his death. The estate in Staten Island was inherited by his second son, Roderick MacLeaod Cameron.
Descendants
Through his son Roderick, he was the grandfather of Roderick "Rory" William Cameron, an American travel writer who was a contributing editor of L'Oeil. In January 1921, his granddaughter, the debutante Mary Cameron, was given a dance for 600 people at the home of Edith Kingdon Gould, the wife of George J. Gould, at 857 Fifth Avenue. In May 1921, she was married to Juan R. Mayer, the son of Charles W. Mayer, at St. Thomas's Church in New York.
