Alexander Cameron (1 November 1832–3 February 1915), tobacco manufacturer, was born in Grantown, Inverness-shire, Scotland, the son of Alexander Cameron, a farmer and merchant, and Elizabeth Grant Cameron. His father died in 1840, and the following year his mother married James Cruikshanks, a shoemaker. In 1841 the family moved to Petersburg, where Cameron's mother died in January 1848. He attended the local schools, and, following the path of his elder brother, William Cameron, he had entered the tobacco business of David Dunlop (1804–1864) by 1850.
Cameron later joined his brother's tobacco-manufacturing company, Cameron and Crawford, which opened in Petersburg about 1858. William Cameron kept his factory operating during the Civil War, while Alexander Cameron reportedly ran the Union blockades between North Carolina and Nassau and deposited his earnings in England, which left the Cameron brothers with much-needed cash and good credit at the end of the war. Immediately afterward, William Cameron began expanding the family's tobacco business to Australia, where the brothers eventually opened factories in Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney. By 1866 Alexander Cameron had moved to Richmond, probably at the urging of his brother, and founded Alexander Cameron and Company to manufacture plug tobacco. Also, in conjunction with their brothers-in-law, the Camerons opened factories in Kentucky and England during the 1860s. They secured a profitable contract to supply tobacco to the British navy.
By 1870 the tobacco-manufacturing companies owned by Alexander Cameron, William Cameron, and their younger brother, George Cameron, were among the largest in Richmond and Petersburg, and by continuing to expand their business throughout the remainder of the century, they made it one of the largest such enterprises operated by Americans at that time. They sold tobacco around much of the world through agents in Australia, China, India, Japan, South Africa, Europe, and North America. Although each company operated independently, they all worked together buying, manufacturing, and selling all forms of tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars, plug tobacco, and smoking tobacco. In 1886 William Cameron retired, leaving the management of the far-flung business in the hands of Alexander Cameron and George Cameron, who purchased another Richmond firm within two years to create A. and G. Cameron and Sizer, later known as Cameron and Cameron.
By early in the 1890s the Camerons' factories in Richmond and Petersburg alone employed hundreds of workers and could produce as much as four million pounds of tobacco each year. Alexander Cameron and his partners began to face increasing competition from the American Tobacco Company, created in 1890, which continually undercut the prices of independent manufacturers. Cameron attempted to compete but ultimately decided to retire from the business, and by 1904 he had sold the Cameron factories to the new British-American Tobacco Company.
On 1 September 1868 Cameron married Mary Parke Haxall at her family's estate in Orange County. They had six sons, four daughters, and another child who died young. The family enjoyed substantial wealth and occasionally traveled abroad. During one of these visits in 1875 Cameron and his wife were presented to Queen Victoria. Cameron was prominent in Richmond business and society and served as a director of the city's Chamber of Commerce and of the State Bank of Virginia. With several of his sons he was also a founding director of the Cameron-Tennant Machine Works in 1899. Cameron remained close to his Scottish roots, retained his accent, and hosted an annual pheasant supper at which he served birds brought over from Scotland.
In June 1914 Cameron suffered a stroke at his family's summer home in Orange County. He recovered and returned to Richmond, but on 3 February 1915 Alexander Cameron died at his home of pneumonia. He was buried in the family plot at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.
Sources Consulted:
National Cyclopędia of American Biography (1891–1984), 7:321–322; Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography (1915), 4:258–260 (portrait); Philip Alexander Bruce, Virginia: Rebirth of the Old Dominion (1929), 3:391–392; Cameron family Bible record, Accession 25020 and Grant-Cameron family Bible record, Accession 25164, both Library of Virginia; Petersburg Daily Index, 7 Sept. 1868; Petersburg Index and Appeal, 19 Apr. 1875; Andrew Morrison, ed., City on the James: Richmond, Virginia (1893), 126–128; Joseph C. Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America (1949), 81, 131; correspondence and documents related to Cameron tobacco companies in British-American Tobacco Company, Ltd., Papers, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Death Certificate No. 3288, Richmond City, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; obituaries in New York Times, Petersburg Daily Index-Appeal, Richmond News Leader, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, all 4 Feb. 1915; editorial tributes in Richmond News Leader, 4 Feb. 1915, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, 5 Feb. 1915; memorial in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 24 (1916): xxxvii–xlii.
Image courtesy of the Library of Virginia.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Marianne E. Julienne.
How to cite this page:
Marianne E. Julienne,"Alexander Cameron (1832–1915)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2001 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Cameron_Alexander, accessed [today's date]).
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