User:DrThneed/Alexander Allan Cameron

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_A._Cameron

Alexander Allan Cameron (also known as Alejandro Cameron, Dunedin, New Zealand, 1868 – Hurlingham, Argentina, 1950) was a genocidal criminal of the Selknam people and New Zealand administrator, also known in Argentina and Chile as Alejandro Cameron.

Family
Alexander Cameron was born in 1868, in Dunedin, New Zealand, as the first child from the first marriage between Mary Ann Reid, born in Tapanui, Otago, New Zealand, and the Scottish immigrant John Cameron, originally from Ardnamurchan, Argyllshire, Scotland.

In 1892 Cameron emigrated to Chile. On April 9, 1896 he married Emma Victoria Crawford in Punta Arenas, who died on February 17, 1887 during a childbirth in the Caleta Josefina ranch, Tierra del Fuego. Emma Victoria was the daughter of the marriage between Anna Maria Sheward and James Field Crawford, captain of the British navy who emigrated to New Zealand, whose remains are buried in the small Onaisin Cemetery in Tierra del Fuego.

Alexander married Alice Mabel Smith for the second time on July 26, 1899, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was the daughter of the marriage between Edith Hogg and Theodore Barlow Smith. From this marriage were born: Amy Barlow (1900), Heather Alice (1901), Ian Archibald (1903), Alexander Raymond (1905) and Allan Reid (1916). In 1922 Alexander Cameron made a trip to Great Britain with his wife. She passed away on June 7, 1926, in Edmonton, Middlesex, England.

On September 27, 1929 Alexander Cameron married Kathleen Hanbury Peacock in London, England and settled in Hurlingham, Buenos Aires, Argentina where he died in 1950.

Work
In February 1894 Alexander Cameron was appointed administrator of the Caleta Josefina ranch, the first of the Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego.

Cameron had great experience and outstanding conditions for the task entrusted. Since childhood he had learned from his father, who was an administrator of a farm in New Zealand, everything related to the raising of sheep and the industries that derive from it and, in addition, he had extensive knowledge of administration and business, what that would differentiate it from the administrators of the other estancias in Tierra del Fuego.

The rapid pace of the works directed by Alexander Cameron meant that in 1897 the definitive installation works of the Caleta Josefina ranch were completed. At that time, Cameron and other employees of the Caleta Josefina ranch had to appear in court for having detained and deported, for their 'distribution' in Punta Arenas, 165 indigenous people. During the trial, Cameron was declared a prisoner, syndicated by numerous witnesses as one of the main direct agents of the extermination of the Selknam. In 1904 the trial was closed without guilty of the multiple credited crimes. Cameron, as well as Matías Matzen, Keneth Mc Leod, Gregorio Prado, Jacobo Nielsen and Ernesto Wales were acquitted.

As of 1905, Alexander Cameron became General Manager of the Society, holding the position until 1915, the year in which he resigned his activities for the society.

Legacy
In 1904, the Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego founded a settlement on the southern coast of Bahía Inutilized with the name of Cameron. This village is currently called Villa Cameron and is the seat of the municipality of Timaukel.

In recognition of his important and extensive services, the name of Cameron was given to a ranch created later on the grounds located to the south of the Caleta Josefina and San Sebastián ranches.

Other relatives in Patagonia
From the children of his father's second marriage to Isabella Georgina Burbury, Frances Flora Roseveare and Donald Raymond emigrated to Chile, born in 1883 and 1885 respectively in Otago, New Zealand.

Donald emigrated to Punta Arenas in 1906 and died in 1920 in Las Heras, Argentina. Frances Flora Roseveare married New Zealander Robert Ernest Thompson, in 1915 in Punta Arenas, who began working with Alexander Cameron and became a prominent administrator of various ranches in Tierra del Fuego. The family returned to New Zealand in 1936.