THE late Mrs. Jessie Cameron, Vulcan Cottage, Aviemore, was well and favourably known to quite a few of our readers. Hers was, besides, a personality so striking that we would reckon it inappropriate if nothing appeared in our Magazine to mark our sense of loss through her removal hence.
Jessie Cumming—for that was her maiden name—was born at Lethendey, Carrbridge, about the year 1829. Both her parents are said to have been pious, unassuming people, who made such as feared the Lord very welcome to their home. She was thus from her childhood both carefully trained and privileged with the fellowship of those whose faith and manner of life were fitted to be instruments in the hand of the Holy Spirit, to allure the young to the Saviour. When quite a young girl she helped to nurse a grandfather, an elder in the Parish Church of Duthil, and a very intelligent man, who lived to the great age of ninety-nine years and six months. Jessie herself was endowed with a bright intellect and an excellent memory, and thus, through paying much regard to all that her grandfather used to relate of matters of personal experience, her information touching the religious life of Duthil was extensive, full and correct. This elder’s wife—grandmother of the subject of this present notice—was a pious woman. Her name was Eliza, a native, it would seem, of Rothiemurchus. It is credibly reported that when the Rev. John Graham, afterwards of Ardclach, was for a brief ministry in Rothiemurchus, there sat one day in the open field to hear him, under one plaid, three women all of one Christian name—Eliza—and the three are said to have been savingly changed through hearing Mr. Graham preach that one sermon. Eliza, grandmother of the late Mrs. Cameron, Vulcan Cottage, was one of the three.
Jessie Cumming, when twenty-four years of age, married Duncan Cameron, the well-known godly blacksmith and catechist of Aviemore, a man of sterling character, although his independence of mind and abrupt outspokenness sometimes caused himself and others some trouble. Mrs. Cameron was doubtless influenced religiously, not a little, by her godly husband, who was
not wont either to hold his convictions loosely, nor to hide them out of sight. The reverence in which she held him comes out so well, and, as I deem, so edifyingly, in a note written by Mrs. Cameron in 1860 which came into the present writer’s possession after her death, that I take the liberty of transcribing it. This is what she says:—”20th February, 1860. Often have I been thinking of writing down some incidents of my life . . . I was married on 12th July, 1853, to a dear and loving husband, of whom I am not worthy. May the great God, who keeps the keys of the heart, bless this union to my soul. If otherwise, it would have been better for me to have been married to an infidel. Lord, order it to be for my good, and make it the means of bringing a poor prodigal back to Thee. And teach me that here we have no continuing city, and make me seek the one to come.”
Her husband died in 1884, and thus Mrs. Cameron lived a widow for the long period of thirty years, under the care, we may add, of her devoted son, Peter Cameron, who now lives to mourn a mother’s removal. Among other factors which, with the divine blessing, helped to mould her life and general outlook upon the religious and ecclesiastical world, we may mention the preaching of the late Rev. Archibald Cook, especially a sermon of his which she heard in her youth from the text, “Fear not, little flock.” Dr. Kerr’s collection of “Sermons Preached in Times of Persecution,” was much prized by her, and towards the end of her days, she highly valued the writings of John Bunyan, his discourses on “The Broken and Contrite Heart,” and on “The Love that passeth Knowledge,” being special favourites.
When things came to a crisis in the Free Church in 1892-93, and the Free Presbyterian Church was formed into a distinct body, Mrs. Cameron was as loyal in standing for the old paths as any. The old meeting house which her husband built, and in which he used to conduct services, became what stood and stands for the Free Presbyterian Church in Aviemore, and in Mrs. Cameron’s home, which is close beside the meeting place, missionaries and ministers who went to hold services there, were always most hospitably entertained. Mrs. Cameron’s constancy in supporting the Free Presbyterian cause knew no faltering to her last breath.
When the subject of this notice was a girl of about nine years of age she met with a serious accident, whereby she narrowly escaped the loss of a leg. Although it scarcely interfered with her general activity and industriousness, it left her lame all her days, and made her attendances on the means of grace, if at a distance, more arduous in her case than it would otherwise have been. Yet regularity in attending upon the means of grace was quite a feature of her life, and when she was so weak as to be unable to walk she would insist on being carried. Even when she became too frail to go out to the place of meeting beside her
own home, and her sight was so badly affected that she could not read, her retentive memory served her to recall many portions of the Scriptures, especially of the book of Psalms which her pious parents made her learn in her girlhood. The comfort she thus derived from a godly upbringing made her urge much on such as came under her influence to be diligent in treasuring up in their youth portions of God’s word, as they did not know in how many ways they might, ere they finished their course, be deprived of opportunities of using the Scriptures as read. She died on the 28th of March of this year. Her last words were—
“The storm is changed into a calm
At His command and will.”
Love to the Lord’s people, diligence in waiting upon God in the means of grace, courage and constancy in holding forth “a banner because of the truth,” with a lowly estimate of her own attainments in grace, were, we think, her leading characteristics.
J. R. M.