BENJAMIN B. CAMERON

The following bio was taken from page 140 of the book entitled "Rusk County History" compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

Transcribed by Shirley Koym

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

William and Annie Cameron are buried in a small cemetery in Talladega, Alabama. William came from South Carolina. He died in 1835 at the age of ninety-two. They had seven children. One was Benjamin B. Cameron. He was married and had eight children. His first wife, Martha, is also buried in Talladega.

Benjamin B. Cameron bought land in Rusk County about two miles from Henderson on the Overton Road. In 1856 he brought some of his children and several slaves here. Some of the slaves took the Cameron name when they were freed, and many of their descendants are still living in Rusk County.

Benjamin soon met and married Rebecca Thompson, who was visiting her uncle, Charles Thompson. He was a cotton buyer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He built the house on North High Street that was known as the mother-in-law house since he built a room on top of the house for his mother-in-law. It later was known as the Trammel School House.

Benjamin’s youngest daughter, Victoria Antoinette, was only thirteen when he came to Rusk County. She married H. D. E. Redwine when she was sixteen and they had six children: Mary, Nina, Antoinette, Bennie, Ferrna, and Ras.

Benjamin and Rebecca had two children. James Likens and Annie Beatrice. James Likens was only two years older than Victoria Antoinette’s (his half-sister) oldest child, Mary.

James Likens studied to be a pharmacist and for fifty years had Cameron’s Drug Store on the east corner of South Main and the Public Square.

Florence Elizabeth Rhodes came to Henderson to teach piano lessons. She had lived on a plantation in Louisiana and had studied music in New Orleans. She married James L. Cameron, and they had one child, a daughter, Florence Rebecca, who married Thomas Lavalle Mitchell, originally from Elysian Fields, Texas, near Marshall. He was also a pharmacist and later was in the insurance business. They had only one child, Alfred Cameron Mitchell. He has a doctorate degree from The University of Texas at Austin and now is a professor at the University of Houston in Houston, Texas. He teaches business statistics.

Thomas Lavalle Mitchell died in Henderson in February 1977. Rebecca Cameron Mitchell still lives in Henderson, but has moved from the old house at the north corner of South Van Buren and West Ragley. The Citizens Bank bought the property and sold the house and is using the north part as a parking lot.

Annie Beatrice Cameron, daughter of Benjamin B. and Rebecca Cameron, married J. D. Myres. They had two sons, Otis and Eustis, both deceased. Eustis, the youngest, had one son, Jack, who lives in Missouri City, Texas and has three children.

Submitted by Rebecca Mitchell