Symbol; A Clan Crest, & My Search for Our Original Ferguson

The Clan Ferguson of Scotland crest and motto.

The symbol that has the most meaning to my husband and I, is the crest for his clan; the Ferguson clan of Scotland. The crest, as you can see above, includes a bee, on a thistle, all of which sits on a 'chapeau' ( a heraldic term for a cap of ermine). The motto for the clan is 'Dulcius ex asperis', which means 'sweeter after adversity'. This was a motto that my husband and I held close to our hearts, and in our minds, when we struggled with the conception of our first, and then our second child. We faced a fair bit of adversity in getting those buns to bake, with both major surgery and then IVF, but boy! It was a sweet result! We decided to use the name Ferguson in honour of that adversity, and its resulting sweetness.

But from where does the name Fergusson come, and how does it fit into our family's genealogy? In the family there is a series of George Ferguson Grossets. Following this line backwards I knew that I would eventually find a woman with a maiden last name 'Ferguson'. The George Grosset that I wrote about back in February, for the Heirlooms week, was the son of Ebenezer Grosset and Helen Ferguson, the 3x great grandparents of my husband.

George Grosset (1863-1935)

Ebenezer Grosset had married twice. His first wife, Elizabeth Thompson died after just 6 years of marriage, during which time they had 3 children. He would have struggled to manage the children alone, as well as earn a wage to keep their home together, so it's not surprising that Ebenezer married again, fairly quickly after Elizabeth's passing. In 1860 Ebenezer Grosset, at the age of 31, married Helen Ferguson, a 32 year old spinster. Together they had 4 children; Margaret Annie Connell Grosset, George Grosset (as mentioned above), Jane Shields Grosset, and Catherine Morrison Bell Grosset. 

I've been unable to find any birth or baptism records for Helen (sometimes called Ellen) Ferguson (or Fergusson), Her marriage record to Ebenezer states clearly, however, that her father (deceased at the time of her marriage) was George Ferguson, a gardener, and her mother was named Margaret Morrison. In census reports Helen gave her place of birth as Prestonpans, Haddingtonshire, which is now known as East Lothian. And I could make a rough estimate of year of birth from Helen's marriage record. If she were indeed 32 years of age in 1860, when she married Ebenezer, she must have been born around 1828, give or take a year. Armed with all this information I set about trying to find more records relating to George Ferguson and Margaret Morrison. 

First I searched for a record of marriage between a George Ferguson and a Margaret Morrison, in the Edinburgh area, around 1810-1830. It didn't take long. Scotland's People, is the source of all historic records for Scottish genealogical research, and a quick search on their website helped me find a record, where the proclamation of Banns of Marriage were made at St Cuthbert's church, Edinburgh, for George Ferguson, a gardener at Lochrin, and Margaret Morrison, daughter of a shoemaker named James Morrison. At the time, according to the record, they were living at 235 Canongate, Edinburgh. Lochrin was possibly Lochrin House; a grand house in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh about a 30 minute walk from Canongate, where George and Margaret lived. Lochrin House was owned by Michael Edwin Fell in 1816, who had just married his wife, Jane Callander Haig in January of the same year, also at St Cuthbert's. I've been unable to find a picture of the house, and it is long since gone; replaced by a row of tenement buildings (with retail properties on the ground floor) circa 1897, now known as Lochrin Buildings. This old map of the area gives an idea of how much garden in which George might have worked.

Lochrin House can be seen here in the north east corner of the intersection of Gilmour Place and Leven Street/ Home Street.

After having confirmed George and Margaret's marriage I was then able to find quite a few of their children, through parish records. George and Margaret must have moved from Canongate at some point soon after their marriage, as by March 1st 1817 they welcomed their first child; George Fergusson who was baptised at Prestonpans, East Lothian on 25th May the same year. A further 5 siblings followed; Catherine Ferguson (1818), James Ferguson (1821), Margaret Ferguson (1826), Helen Ferguson (1828) and John Morrison Aitcheson Fergusson (1830). There was a sixth baptismal record from 1824, for a child born of George and Margaret at Prestonpans, but the full date of birth and baptism, and the name of the child, was omitted from the record. It is impossible to know if this was Helen's actual birth and baptismal record, since I've been unable to locate her's, or if this was another child who was otherwise unrecorded. 

Prestonpans Parish Church

Prestonpans is now located in East Lothian, but back in the 1820s and 30s the county was called Haddingtonshire. It was predominantly a coal mining town, but maps from the 1800s show that there was plenty of space for gardening work, and George had continued to work as a gardener, as recorded on each and every baptismal record of his children.

Map published 1895, and found on National Library of Scotland.

After the birth of their youngest child, John, the only record I could find relating to George was a death record, dated 31st July 1842. According to the record, he died of consumption (otherwise known as TB), and was buried in the south west corner of the Prestonpans kirkyard. The death record included his age at death; 53. This gave me a rough idea of a birth year, and using this I ran a search for a birth record for a George Ferguson born between 1787-1790. When I saw the results, one entry jumped out to me; William Wright Fergusson and Elizabeth Sheills had a son named George in 1788, who was baptised at St Cuthberts, Edinburgh. It was the mother's maiden surname that caught my attention. One of George Ferguson's grand-daughters, by Helen and Ebenezer, had a middle name 'Sheills' (sometimes spelled Shields); Jane Shields Grosset, born 1865. This was my breakthrough; I now had all I was ever going to find about our original Ferguson. 

Presumably, without the income from George's gardening work, Margaret was forced to return to the nearby city of Edinburgh, where cheap housing was possibly more abundant. The next record found relating to Margaret was her own death record, from 9th February 1848. She had been living at Murdoch's Close, High Street, Edinburgh, which was a tenement at 48-50 High Street. She died of typhus fever; a disease caused by bacteria spread to humans by fleas, and lice. 

Margaret Fergusson (nee Morrison) was 51 at the time of her death; the same age of my husband, her 4x great grandson. George Fergusson was 53; the same age as myself. As I sit in our comfortable home, with heating, hot water, a fridge full of food, and soft, clean comfortable beds I wonder at how so much sweeter our lives are, compared to the adversity filled lives of George and Margaret. 

#Grosset