Sir James Fergusson 4th Bart.

Awarded the compensation with Sir David Hunter Blair (q.v.) for the enslaved people on Rozelle estate in Jamaica as owners-in-fee.

1. Sir James Fergusson [as 'Ferguson'] and Sir David Hunter Blair are identified as 'owners-in-fee' of the Rozelle estate in St Thomas-in-the-East in the compensation records, and the estate appears against the names of Sir A. Fergusson and Sir D. H. Blair in the Jamaica Almanacs in 1811 and then as Fergusson and Blair thereafter. The Rozelle estate had been one of three belonging to Robert Hamilton of Bourtreehill (died c. 1777) who named his Ayrshire estate after the Jamaica property on the building of Rozelle House by Robert Adam in 1760. In 1763, Robert Hamilton sold the Rozelle estate to an Ayrshire neighbour, Charles Montgomery of Broomlands, for £6000. Montgomery in turn sold a half share to Robert Hamilton's step-son William Hunter of Mainholm and Brownhill, and left his own half share to the banker Charles Fergusson, the younger brother of Sir Adam Fergusson 3rd bart. A decade after Charles Fergusson's banking firm failed - it stopped payment 10/06/1772 - Ferguson assigned his interest in the Rozelle estate in Jamaica to Sir Adam Fergusson, who had advanced cash to his brother to avert his bankruptcy.

2. Sir James Fergusson inherited from his uncle Sir Adam Fergusson, and Sir James Fergusson's son Sir Charles Dalrymple-Fergusson of Kilkerran (1800-1849) 5th bart. is described as a 'colonial proprietor' in his ODNB entry (in the context of a brief discussion of his protectionist politics and condemnation of Peel's free trade policy as 'injurious to the colonies'). The 6th bart. is also in the ODNB as 'politician and colonial governor.'

3. In 2024 Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury (2013- ) released a personal statement revealing that, through his biological father, he was the great-great-great-grandson of Sir James Fergusson, 4th Baronet (1765−1838), who owned slaves on the Rozelle Estate plantation in Jamaica and received compensation from the British Government in 1837 following the abolition of slavery.

T71/867 St Thomas-in-the-East claim no. 510; Jamaica Almanac (1811 et seq.).

1. Sir A. Fergusson was Sir Adam Fergusson, Sir James Fergusson's uncle, from whom Sir James inherited in 1813; http://guide.visitscotland.com/vs/guide/5,en,SCH1/objectId,SIG49211Svs,curr,GBP,season,at1,selectedEntry,home/home.html [accessed 15/05/2011]; Eric Graham, Burns and the Sugar Plantocracy of Ayrshire (2014) pp. 28-29.

2. ODNB online, G.B. Smith, rev. Roger T. Stearn, 'Fergusson, Sir Charles Dalrymple- of Kilkerran [formerly Charles Fergusson of Kilkerran], fifth baronet (1800-1849), landowner.'

3. A personal statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury; see also Archbishop of Canterbury reveals ancestral links to slavery, The Guardian, 22 October 2024 and Alex Renton, To … Justin Welby: our family’s slavery history is truly awful, The Guardian, 23 October 2024.