Autumn 11 - The Clan Cameron Association Scotland.

European to become so entrenched that there will be no place for the
African except at the white man’s pleasure”. There was to be no
repeat of the situation which had developed in the then Rhodesia.
To achieve some reconciliation of both these conflicting positions he
established a Legislative Council of twenty members - all appointed
by him and all European and Asian. In so far as the local African
population was concerned, he decided education was the way
forward and he started a policy of building schools throughout the
country at all centres of population just as Scotland had done some
seventy years before. During his period as Governor, education
increased ten fold, and he worked closely with the Missions who
could deliver education at half the cost that the Government could
achieve.
During his time in Tanganyika these policies were pursued
successfully and he was indeed ahead of his time by a couple of generations.
Sadly, when he left Tanganyika in 1931 it was the time of
the Depression and funds were not available to continue the
increase in African education and also his successors were not of the
same vision and ability. Nevertheless, on achieving Independence
from Britain on 9 th December 1961, the first President, Julius Nyerere,
who was a product of Cameron’s policy and a teacher and who was
commonly known as “Mwalimu” meaning a teacher, focused on
education.
From Tanganyika, Cameron was promoted further and he returned to
Nigeria from 1931 - 1935 as the Governor of the whole country and
its Commander-in-Chief. In these duties he was as successful as in his
previous posting, but without making the same impact as he had
done in Tanganyika.
On his retiral, he settled down with his wife Gertrude in London and
died on 8 th January 1948 before he could see the fruits of his
Tanganyika period of service culminating in that country’s Independence.
Sadly, his only son died in an air accident in 1941.
In writing this Article, I have retained the wording used at that time
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descendants to speak to, I contacted the local papers asking for information
on the Cameron family after they left St. Kilda. Fortunately, this provided a
good number of responses from people who either knew the Cameron
daughters, Mary and Christina, in their later years, or were able to provide
new information on Donald and his wife Mary after they left St. Kilda.
It may be worth remembering that the main reason the Cameron family
moved to St. Kilda centred on religion, with Donald tending to the spiritual
welfare of the strict Presbyterian community who observed the word of God
in all aspects of their daily lives.
In accounts left by St. Kildans, we read that that the normal day began with
family worship and prayer before work, and again at the end of the day – all
of which would have been spoken in Gaelic. The St. Kildans strictly adhered
to the Lord’s Day and the Sabbath was always observed with great reverence
with a church service in the morning and one in the evening. Sunday was
very much a day of rest and reflection with no work, nor water drawn between
dawn and dusk.
In the book St. Kilda Portraits, we are left a descriptive account of Donald’s
daughter, the late Mary Cameron, as she recalls her childhood memories of
St. Kilda.
“The church was connected with the schoolroom by a door, and sometimes
my father took a class by themselves in the church. When we arrived, part of
it was in ruins as a result of bombardment by a German submarine shortly
before the end of the First World War. The church was a very simple place,
rather austere, which matched the simple, robust faith of the folk who filled it
each Sunday. There was no heating, but I don’t remember that we complained
of the cold. The St. Kilda folk were grand churchgoers. Even babies
of a few weeks old were taken to church; nobody stayed away unless they
were ill.
The manse pew was at the side of the pulpit, at right angles to the other
pews, and from it we could see everyone who was there. The men and boys
sat at the inner end of the pews, and the female members of the family on the
outside; and when the service was over, the menfolk remained seated until
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