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John Cameron & Family Post 1918
When John went off to war in 1915 he left behind his new young, wife Alice pregnant with their first child Elsie who was born in 1915. After his return George arrived in 1919 and Marguerite ( My Mum) in 1923.
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Immediately post war John was busy setting up his forestry business and building a house for his family across the lane at Chapelton.
The New house at Chapelton with John's youngest daughter Marguerite and her fiancé Joe. This photo is from 1948 so they may well have been there for John's funeral.
As the 1920's became the 1930's John and Alice Cameron's family grew up. In many ways they had an idyllic childhood, Yes, there were privations, but they did not know that , it was all that they had ever known. They lived surrounded by some of the most spectacularly beautiful landscapes to be found anywhere.
The surrounding farms and the village swarmed with the children of the post WW I baby boom. They lived surrounded by fields and woods. Fields and woods that assorted ages of children roamed in feral packs. Of course no doubt parents still worried, do parents ever not worry?
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​To us their worries may seem foolish, my Grandfather was reluctant to allow my mother to have a bike, because "the roads were getting so busy these days" This was 1935 in the North of Scotland . The A9 may not quite have had grass down the middle, but in laces it was not so far off. This may have been the recent past but still, it was pre-antibiotics and pre most modern Medicine. Children still regularly died from such things as Measles, Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria, and blood poisoning from minor seeming cuts.
The stories I have been told of the children's escapades, would take a book of their own. One rather tragic little tale however does illustrate why parents will always worry. This was the death of "Inverness Granty''
As time went by, their growing up became increasingly overshadowed with the prospect of another cataclysmic war in Europe. For those who had fought and survived the First World War, it must have seemed beyond belief that they would live to see it happen again, and after only 20 years. However, ominous world events doubtless were, to the three children growing up at Chapelton they may as well have been on another planet, safely cocooned as they were from most of the big bad world outside.
First Elsie, then George and finally Marguerite they all attended the school at Deshar, quite literally at the end of the lane up to Chapelton. Assorted other children from Docharn and other farms on the hill behind Chapelton, would join them for the short wander down the lane to school. They would all have left Deshar School at 11, Elsie then went on to boarding school at Kingussie, whilst George and Marguerite went to Grantown School.
The second world War arrived as expected, George went off in the Merchant Navy, somehow managing to survive the full duration of the war.
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As is described elsewhere, the war presented John with a huge business opportunity as vast amounts of timber were needed. Profiteering from the war was greatly frowned upon but he presumably kept a low profile whilst discretely raking in the cash. To be fair, all he was doing was his normal business, its just that the war brought huge demand for his product.
However he pulled it off, John Cameron and his family emerged from the war, all alive and intact, with a thriving business, and as a very well liked and respected local family. Sadly he was not to have very long in which to enjoy his new-found success. In 1948, only three years after the end of the war he died. The damage had been done when John was gassed in The trenches in 1917. Not badly enough to be invalided out at the time he had a bed chest and weak heart for the rest of his not very long life.