Tour Scotland short 4K travel video clip of the sight and sounds of a steam train locomotive on the West Highland Railway Line near Fassfern on ancestry, genealogy, history visit to the Scottish Highlands, Britain, United Kingdom. Fassfern, Scottish Gaelic: An Fasadh Feàrna, is a hamlet at the bottom of Glen Suileag. Historically it was spelled Fassiefern. It is located just off the A830 road from Fort William to Mallaig, and about 6 miles West of Fort William in Lochaber. Clan MacPhail as part of the Clan Chattan Federation is thought to have originated in this area around the 13th century but it eventually fell under the authority of Clan Cameron territory. John Cameron of Fassiefern was born in Inverscadale by Loch Linnhe on 16 August 1771. He was one of six children of Sir Ewen Cameron, 1st Baronet, of Fassiefern in the parish of Kilmallie, and his first wife, Louisa, daughter of Duncan Campbell of Barcaldine and Glenure. Nursed by the wife of a family retainer whose son, Ewen McMillan, was his foster brother and faithful attendant through life, young Cameron grew up in close sympathy with the traditions and associations of his home and people, who looked to his father as the representative head of the clan in the enforced absence of the chief of Lochiel. He received his schooling in part at Fort William Grammar School, but chiefly by private tuition, before going to King's College, Aberdeen. After the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars, at his special request, a commission was obtained for Cameron, and he entered the army in May 1793 as Ensign in the 26th Cameronians, before being promoted as lieutenant in a newly-formed Highland Company. In the following year, George, Marquess of Huntly, later George, 5th Duke of Gordon, Captain 3rd Foot Guards, raised a corps of Highlanders at Aberdeen, which originally was numbered as the 100th Foot, but a few years later was redesignated as the now 92nd Gordon Highlanders. Cameron was appointed to command a company in this regiment on 24 June 1794, serving in Corsica and Gibraltar from 1795 to 1797 and in the south of Ireland in 1798. There he is said to have fallen in love with a young Irish woman in Kilkenny, but the match was broken off in submission to his father's wishes. Cameron was promoted to major in the Cameron Highlanders in 1801, before appointment as lieutenant-colonel of a newly formed second battalion, later disbanded, on 23 June 1808 which served mainly in Ireland. During the Waterloo Campaign, Cameron's 92nd Foot alongside the 42nd Highlanders, 1st Royals, and 44th East Essex, formed General Pack's 9th Brigade of Sir Thomas Picton's 5th Division, and were among the first troops to march out of Brussels at daybreak on 16 June 1815. On that day, when leading his regiment in an attack on an enemy stronghold, on the road to Charleroi near the village of Quatre-Bras, John Cameron of Fassiefern was mortally wounded. He died that following morning in 1815 and was buried there at the side of the road to Ghent road, during the great storm of the 17th by his foster brother and faithful attendant, Private Ewen McMillan, who had followed his fortunes from the first day he joined the Army. At the request of his family, Cameron's remains were disinterred soon afterwards, brought home in a man of war and, in the presence of a gathering of three thousand highlanders from the then still populous district of Lochaber, were laid to rest in Kilmallie churchyard where an obelisk inscribed with a quotation by Sir Walter Scott marks the site of his grave. Of interest to folks with ancestry, genealogy or Scottish Family Roots in Scotland who may wish to visit one day. Find things to see and do in Scotland where you are always welcome.
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