Portrait and Biographical Album of Fulton County,
Illinois: containing full page portraits and biographical sketches of
prominent and representative citizens of the county: together with
portraits and biographies of all the presidents of the United States,
and governors of the state; Biographical Pub. Co., Chicago, IL; 1890;
page 485-486; Transcribed by Margaret Rose Whitehurst
Thomas Officer Camron. Those interested in pioneer
experiences would derive much pleasure from conversation with this
gentleman who well remembers many incidents of frontier life in this
county. His father, James Camron, is a native of Kentucky, whence he
came to White County when but a child. He married Elizabeth, daughter
of Joel Harrell, a Kentuckian and a slaveholder, who on removing to
what was then the Territory of Illinois brought slaves with him. The
marriage of this couple was probably the first celebrated in Cass
Township. Their first home was near Smithfield where their first-born,
our subject, opened his eyes to the light February 18, 1828. His
parents had eleven children, nine of whom lived to maturity. The mother
entered into rest in 1872 and the father subsequently contracted a
second marriage.
When our subject was about six years old his parents removed to
a farm near Bernadotte, being accompanied by his uncles, Thomas and
John. The latter had begun building a mill which was the starting point
of the town, and was the first watermill on Spoon River. He, of whom we
write, distinctly remembers the journey hither and that, the river
being up, the goods were brought across in an Indian dugout while the
men were obliged to swim and drive their stock. A cabin was built in
the brush from which their land extended on to the prairie to the
south. This part of the farm was soon placed under cultivation, and by
the aid of their cattle, of which they owned a considerable number, the
brush was soon killed around the house. The stock grazed about at will
and Mrs. Camron was in the habit of sprinkling salt about in the brush
when the dew was on to induce the animals to graze there and so tramp
down the bushes.
The sod of the prairie was turned by a plow with a wooden
moldboard, drawn by an ox-team, and the tract upon which our subject
now lives is one of the first pieces subdued from its primitive
wildness. Mr. Camron remembers an Indian scare which was occasioned by
a settler named Welsh who lived some five miles northwest, passing Mr.
Camron's yelling and comporting himself in a savage manner, thus giving
the impression that the red men were in the neighborhood. On another
occasion Indians had camped in the vicinity, and refusing to leave when
ordered to do so were set upon with hickory switches and whipped away.
While the home or our subject's parents was near Smithfield there was
an unusual fall of snow which is distinctly recalled by Mr. Camron. His
father was getting in wood by hitching the horse to a "drag" and
starting him homeward in a place which he had broken down somewhat in
the snow. The wife would unhitch the horse and start him back to her
husband, in this way saving his passage to and fro in the drifts.
He of whom we write, received his education in an old log
schoolhouse about two miles from his home, his text books being
Webster's Speller and a paddle, and during the latter part of his
attendance, a geography. He lived on the home farm until he was
twenty-two years old, when he was united in marriage with Miss Mary C.
Ellis, entered a prairie farm in Boone County, Iowa, and established
his home there. Mrs. Camron is a daughter of Solomon H. Ellis, one of
the old settlers in White County, where she was born and lived to the
age of eighteen years. She belongs to a family which is of the Dunkard
religion. She has borne her husband nine children, two of whom died in
infancy. The survivors are Joel Franklin, Permelia J., Emma A., Ellen,
Enos A., William H. and Alice S. The oldest of these has a wife and
three children and is now farming in Calhoun County, Iowa. Permelia is
the wife of J. F. Harrold, of Farmers Township, and Ellen, the wife of
M. Dunblazier, also a farmer in this township. The others are unmarried
and still reside under the parental roof.
The Iowa home of our subject was about seventy miles from Spirit
Lake where the massacre took place in 1847, the section at the time of
his residence being quite on the frontier. When the war broke out Mr.
Camron returned to his native State with the intention of leaving his
family at home and going into the army. His people, however, were so
set against his intention that he finally abandoned it and settled,
selling his Iowa land and buying about two miles north of his present
residence. There he remained twelve years, then traded for about eleven
hundred acres in Arkansas County, Ark., where he made his home three
years. He then returned to this county, traded a part of his land for a
farm of one hundred acres in Bernadotte Township, near the village,
upon the corporation line of which the tract corners. The most of this
property is under a fine state of cultivation, but our subject makes
his home on his father's homestead in order to keep it in proper
condition.
Although favoring Democratic views in the main, Mr. Camron is
not so radical a party man as many of his associates. He has never been
an office-holder, finding sufficient occupation in his personal
affairs, the quiet duties of citizenship and the pleasures of social
and domestic life.
Note from Danni Hopkins: In all of my files the name is spelt
Cameron and the Harrold that is mentioned is Harrell. Also this article
mentions that Thomas' father remarried after the death of his wife,
Elizabeth Harrell. His second wife was Rebecca Matilda Ellis who was a
sister to Mary Catherine that married Thomas Officer Cameron. So
Rebecca was his stepmother and his sister-in-law. Joseph Franklin
Harrell is the wife of Permelia Jane Cameron.
