Clan Cameron

Clan Cameron’s country is Lochaber in the western Highlands, in and around the Great Glen; the chief’s seat is Achnacarry. The clan’s earliest origins are disputed, but Donald Dubh, active about 1410, is generally taken as the first authentic chief. The chiefs have since been styled Mac Dhomhnaill Dubh, and are addressed simply as “Lochiel”.

A long feud with Clan Mackintosh and Clan Chattan was not settled until 1665. Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel fought for the Stuarts in the civil wars and at Killiecrankie in 1689, and the clan was out again in 1715. In 1745 Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the “Gentle Lochiel”, brought his men to Glenfinnan for Prince Charles Edward Stuart; the Camerons held the front line at Culloden in 1746, Achnacarry was burnt, and Lochiel escaped to France.

The Cameron tartans

In 1793 Alan Cameron of Erracht raised the 79th Regiment of Foot at Fort William; it became the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders in 1873. Cameron of Erracht is registered under the Military category and was devised in 1793 for that regiment. Wilsons of Bannockburn recorded it in their 1819 Key Pattern Book as “79th or Camerons Regiment”, and a specimen marked as original regimental cloth survives in the Highland Society of London’s collection.

The plain Cameron sett is credited by the Register to the Sobieski Stewarts, placing it in the Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842. The Lochiel setts are registered separately.

A note on honesty: the popular story that Alan Cameron’s mother designed the regimental tartan by blending her MacDonald tartan with the Government sett is disputed. The tartan historian Peter MacDonald calls it a twentieth-century myth and records that Cameron’s mother was in fact a MacLean.

Clan facts

References

1. Cameron tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. The Original Cameron of Erracht Cloth? — Peter MacDonald
3. The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders — National Army Museum
4. Sir Alan Cameron of Erracht — The Highlanders’ Museum