1. Nova Scotia #10 on 3 Dec 1866 cover from Sherbrooke-St. Marys to Durham, Nova Scotia. Backstamps Sherbrooke-St. Marys DE 3 1866, Durham, ? DE ????, and an oval H(alifax) cancel 4 DE 1866. Addressed to Miss Margaret C. Cameron, Durham, Pictou.
2. United States #137, 6c. Lincoln, carmine, on January 9th,1871 cover from Harrison Square, Massachusetts to Durham, Nova Scotia. Addressed to Miss Margaret C. Cameron, Durham, Nova Scotia. Harrison Square, JAN 9 cancellation on front. Backstamps: Amherst, JA 13 1871, and Durham, NS, JA 17 1871.
Miss Margaret C. Cameron was 35 years old when she received the letter in 1866 from Sherbrooke-St Marys. She ran a dry goods and groceries store she had inherited from her father Duncan Cameron in Durham, Pictou County. She was never married and lived with her sister, June D. Cameron at Hardwood Hill just northwest of Durham town.
A directory published in 1867 of all of Durham's local businesses, including farmers, shoemakers, and merchants includes a map with the location of each business. On the river side is the enterprise of Duncan Cameron, Dry Goods and Groceries. But Duncan was no longer running the store, since Hutchinson’s Nova Scotia Directory 1864-5 lists Cameron, Margaret C., merchant, in Durham, Pictou Co. and Lovell’s Province of Nova Scotia Directory 1871 lists Cameron, Miss M, shopkeeper in Durham.
Margaret C. Cameron, age 40, appears in the 1871 census for Hardwood Hill, Pictou. Her occupation: shopkeeper. She is living with June D Cameron, age 37, seamstress. Both are single. Twenty years later, in the 1891 census, Margaret Cameron, single, shopkeeper, age 60, is still living at Hardwood Hill with her sister June D, age 57. McAlpine's Nova Scotia Directory, 1890-97 lists Cameron, Mrs. Margaret C., grocer, Durham. The entry is bolded indicating she paid an additional sum for the advertising. The "Mrs." is clearly a printer's error.
"The Durham community, a small rural village on the West River some 10 km upstream from Pictou Town, was once one of the intellectual cross-roads of Nova Scotia, and the primary market centre within the West River region. The community only obtained the name 'Durham' sometime after 1838. The Rev. John Peter MacPhie indicates that 'Durham did not receive its present name until the time of the late Lord Durham in Canada. The name was the suggestion of the late William Graham, merchant, and was confirmed at a public meeting held for the purpose. The late Miss Margaret Cameron of Durham distinctly remembered the meeting, and that it was on Mr. Graham's motion that the name Durham was chosen.'" MacPhie, Rev. John Peter. (1914). Pictonians at Home and Abroad: Sketches of Professional Men and Women of Pictou County - Its History and Institutions. Boston: Pinkham Press. p. 21. Margaret C. would have been a girl of 7- 8 years of age at the time.
The Library and Archives Canada preserves a handbill from 1883 in which Margaret C. Cameron appears as plaintiff in an 1883 action against a creditor, Alexander McKenzie. McKenzie's land is to be auctioned off to satisfy the debt.
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