Cameron was the son of Charles Cameron, governor of the Bahama Islands, by Lady Margaret Hay, daughter of James Hay, 15th Earl of Erroll. His grandfather, Donald Cameron, was the younger son of Dr. Archibald Cameron of Locheil, who had been executed in London in 1753. Charles Hay Cameron erected a monument to his great-grandfather in the Savoy Chapel. It was damaged by a fire in 1864, when Charles Lloyd Norman, Cameron's son-in-law, replaced it by a painted window.
