Clan Ferguson

History

Ferguson means 'son of Fergus', and Fergus was a common name wherever Gaelic was spoken. That is the key to the clan's history. Fergusons appear early in Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Argyll, Perthshire, Aberdeenshire and Fife, and tradition gives them all one ancestor. There is no evidence for that, and the families may well have begun separately, each named for a Fergus of its own.

The origin stories differ by region. The Argyll families claimed descent from Fergus Mor mac Erc, the king who is said to have brought the Scots from Ireland to Dalriada around the year 500. Those of Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire looked to Fergus, lord of Galloway, who founded Dundrennan Abbey and died at Holyrood in 1161. Both claims are traditional. The boars' heads on the Fergusson arms are often read as a nod to the Dalriadic story.

The chiefly house is Kilkerran in Carrick. The family is said to have held land there since the twelfth century, but the first certain record is of John Fergusson of Kilkerran in 1464. By about 1600 the many Fergussons of Carrick looked to Kilkerran as their head. Their neighbours were the Kennedys, and in 1601 they rode with the Earl of Cassillis in the fight near Maybole where the laird of Bargany was killed. Sir John Fergusson supported the king in the civil wars of the 1640s. A later Sir John, a prominent advocate, was made a baronet of Nova Scotia in 1703. His son Sir James became a judge in 1735 with the title Lord Kilkerran.

The Kilkerran family went on to public service overseas. The sixth baronet governed South Australia, New Zealand and Bombay in the nineteenth century. The seventh baronet was Governor-General of New Zealand from 1924 to 1930, and his youngest son Bernard Fergusson, Lord Ballantrae, held the same post from 1962 to 1967.

In the Highlands the leading family was Fergusson of Dunfallandy in Atholl, whose head was known in Gaelic as MacFhearghuis. The Atholl Fergussons followed the Murrays of Atholl. They came out for Montrose in the civil war and for the Jacobites in 1715 and 1745. Another old branch is Craigdarroch in Dumfriesshire, on record since the fourteenth century.

On spelling: the double s is the older form, a plain rendering of 'Fergus's son'. One account has it that record clerks began dropping one s before 1600. The Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Argyll and Perthshire families mostly kept Fergusson, while those in Fife, Aberdeenshire, Angus and Ireland settled on Ferguson. We use the single s on this page because that is how the Scottish Register of Tartans names the tartans. Both spellings share the same chief. Well-known bearers include the poet Robert Fergusson (1750-74), to whom Burns raised a memorial, Adam Ferguson (1723-1816), chaplain to the Black Watch, and Patrick Ferguson (1744-80), who designed a breech-loading rifle.