George Ferguson 'the Governor'

Lieutenant Governor of Tobago at the time of its surrender to the French and natural father of George Ferguson MP for Banffshire (q.v.).

1. Will of George Ferguson of Pitfour proved 18/05/1821. Under it, with the exception of a monetary legacy to his daughter Isabella, he left his entire estate, including his land and slaves in the lslands of Trinidad & Tobago, to his son George Ferguson, a Captain in the Royal Navy.

2. George Ferguson was born in 1749, the youngest of the 6 surviving children of James Ferguson of Pitfour, SCJ, and Anne Murray (of the Elibank family). He took over the running of the Castara estate in the 1770s, after his brother Patrick had been invalided back to Britain in 1772. After the surrender of Tobago to the French in 1781, he moved to Grenada, where he continued as a planter, and in 1795 was wounded in a pistol duel with a Mr. Garraway. He returned home to Scotland in the early 1800s. He died of cancer in 1821 at Pitfour, and is buried in the family mausoleum in Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh.

1. PROB 11/1643/222.

2. Email from the author, 02/10/2014, sourced to M. M. Gilchrist, Patrick Ferguson: "A Man of Some Genius" (Edinburgh, National Museums of Scotland Publications, 2003).

We are grateful to M. M. Gilchrist for her assistance with compiling this entry.