Background
Robert Alexander Cameron was born on February 22, 1828 in Brooklyn, New York, United States. About the time he was fourteen years old his parents moved to Valparaiso, Indiana, United States.
Robert Alexander Cameron was born on February 22, 1828 in Brooklyn, New York, United States. About the time he was fourteen years old his parents moved to Valparaiso, Indiana, United States.
After finishing at the public schools Robert entered the Indiana Medical College, from which he graduated in 1849, later attending Rush Medical College in Chicago.
In 1857 Cameron bought the Valparaiso Republican, which he conducted for several years. He was a delegate to the Republican national convention, where he voted for the nomination of Lincoln, and in the fall of the year he was elected to the lower house of the legislature. On the news of the firing on Fort Sumter he began at once to organize a company of three-months' men. Two days later he telegraphed Gov. Morton that his company was ready, and on April 23 he was mustered in as a captain of the 9th Indiana Volunteers. His first service was in the West Virginia campaign under McClellan. In July he reenlisted, and on the 29th was commissioned a lieutenant-colonel and transferred to the 19th Indiana. On February 3, 1862, he was transferred to the 34th Indiana, of which he was made colonel on June 15. He served at Island No. 10, New Madrid, and at the capture of Memphis. For gallant conduct during the siege of Vicksburg he was recommended by Grant, with five other colonels, for promotion, and on August 11, 1863, was commissioned a brigadier-general. He commanded one of the two divisions (the third) of the 13th Corps that took part in the Red River expedition in the fore part of 1864, and on the wounding of Ransom, at Sabine Cross Roads, April 8, assumed command of the corps. With the defeat and return of the army to the Mississippi and the transfer of the corps to Grant in Virginia, he was placed in command of the Lafourche district of the Department of the Gulf, with headquarters at Thibodaux, Louisiana, where he remained till the close of the war. In the omnibus promotions dated March 13, 1865, he was brevetted a major-general. He resigned from the army June 22 and went to New York. Here he formed the acquaintance of Nathan C. Meeker, agricultural editor of the Tribune, and became greatly interested in the movement for planting farm colonies in the West. On the organization, in Cooper Union, December 23, 1869, of the Union Colony, he was made vice-president, and in the following year, with Meeker and A. C. Fisk, went to Colorado and selected the site now occupied by Greeley. He took a leading part in the founding of the colony, and at the first election, May 1871, was chosen one of the town trustees and subsequently was made president. Three months later, however, he resigned, to take the superintendency of the Fountain Colony, which established Colorado Springs. At the end of the year he returned to Greeley, but in the spring of 1873 took part in the founding of Fort Collins, a venture that proved personally disastrous. After an attempt to recoup his fortunes in San Francisco, he returned to Colorado and settled in Denver. For several years he was inspector of mail service in that city, a post in which he is credited with doing efficient work. In 1885 he was appointed warden of the penitentiary at Canon City, but a change in the state administration two years later caused him to lose the place before he had time to introduce the reforms he had planned. In 1888 he was engaged as immigration agent of the Fort Worth & Denver City Railway. In the outskirts of Canon City he developed a fruit farm and continued to reside there until his death.
He served as a Union general during the American Civil War. During the war he was made a brigadier general and after the war was appointed a brevet major general. After the war he was heavily involved in developing farms in the U. S. state of Colorado. Camerons Cone is located in Pike National Forest, about 7 miles (11 km) from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and was named for Robert Alexander Cameron. When originally dedicated, the summit was called Cameron's Cone.
He served as a Republican delegate to their 1860 convention in Chicago, supporting the campaign of Abraham Lincoln for U. S. President.
He was a large man, somewhat above six feet in height and weighing more than 200 pounds. The Denver News, on his death, said of him that "as a citizen" none "was more highly esteemed. " Boyd, one of the Union colonists, though acknowledging that he had a certain kind of ability, speaks of him as one who "was fertile in expedients, " who was "a man of policy rather than a devotee of principle" and finds fault with him for taking for himself and his partner Flower the best location in Greeley.
Cameron married a daughter of J. B. Flower, one of the founders of Greeley Colony and at one time his partner.
