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

CHAPTER IV
FERGUSONS IN ABERDEENSHIRE, Banffshire, and
Kincardineshire
The name, though not numerous in the county, has long been
rooted in Aberdeenshire. Tradition carries back the connec-
tion of the family now represented by the Fergusons of Kin-
mundy and Pitfour with Inverurie to the time of King Robert
the Bruce. His son, King David, confirmed a charter of the
lands of Auchtererne, in Cromar, granted by Thomas, Earl of
Mar, in 1364, ' Egoni filio Fergusii,' who with his descen-
dants, according to Dr. Joseph Robertson, ' possessed the
estate of Auchtererne ( Watererne) in Cromar, from the reign
of David n. to that of James v., when it would seem they
(as proprietors) became extinct.' The estate was in 1506-7
apparently divided between the husbands of the last owner's
daughters, but a tradition, preserved in a little volume
entitled TJeeside Tales, published in 1872, ' has it that the
last proprietor was the father (?) of the Rev. Mr. Fergusson
of Crathie,' who was minister of that parish in the earlier
half of the seventeenth century, and whose daughter, Agnes
Fergusson, married James Farquh arson of Inverey, and
became the ancestress of the Farquharsons of Auchindryne
and Tullochcoy. It has also been suggested that this Rev.
Mr. Fergusson was an ancestor of Robert Fergusson the poet,
but there appears to be no possibility of definitely establishing
this. The poet was the son of a William Fergusson, book-
keeper in Edinburgh, to which city he had emigrated about
the year 1746 from Aberdeen, having removed to Aberdeen
from Cromar, which was his native place, in that or the
previous year. The poet's mother was Elizabeth, daughter
of John Forbes, tacksman of Templeton, Hillockhead, and