Records of the clan and name of Fergusson, Ferguson and Fergus. Supplement

SECTION III
FERGUSONS IN ABERDEENSHIRE
The account of the family of the name which for about five
hundred years was more or less connected with the locality
of Inverurie, and is still locally represented by the houses of
Pitfour and Kinmundy, given in the Records of the Clan
and Name, was based upon a genealogical MS. preserved at
Kinmundy. It was stated (p. 241) that it was believed ' that
fuller information as to the earlier history of the family
would have been available if the house of Kinmundy had
not been plundered in 1745, and if the Pitfour Papers had
not been destroyed by fire in 1820, when a large number of
valuable mss. perished.' Inquiry had been made, and
neither the proprietor nor the agent of the estate of Pitfour
knew of any family papers having been preserved, when
many interesting documents undoubtedly perished. Owing,
however, to the retirement of the agent for the estate in
1896, there was returned to the house a box labelled with
the name of Governor Ferguson's West Indian estate, and
among the papers relating to his property in Tobago there
were found certain memoranda, letters and documents
throwing light upon the earlier history of the Aberdeenshire
families, from which the extracts which have already been
given in connection with the Athole families and those
which follow are taken.
These papers are interesting as confirming and occasionally
correcting the account already given, and especially in their
testimony to the common origin of the Athole, Ayrshire, and
Aberdeenshire families. Not least curious is the memoran-
dum in which George Scott, a connection of the Fergusons,
who had succeeded his father as town-clerk of Inverury, and
was resident in his old age in Buchan, records the tradition