An Irishman’s Diary on John Ferguson, a forgotten patriot

On the death of her husband, John, on April 23rd, 1906, Mrs Ferguson received this wire from John Dillon, the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, “Ireland has lost one of her ablest and truest sons. I personally mourn our old and honoured friend”.

John Dillon’s tribute read, “all nationalist Irishmen share your grief for one of Ireland’s ablest, bravest and most faithful sons. In his death the Irish cause has suffered an irreparable loss”.

Redmond and Dillon are remembered but Ferguson is known only to the academic historian and perhaps vaguely at that.

Ferguson’s father Leonard was a staunch Ulster Presbyterian and a Conservative. He was an ardent admirer of Isaac Butt until Butt’s defence of Young Islanders and Fenians and support of an amnesty for prisoners, and aspirations to nationalism, wrought a change of attitude.

The Fergusons were substantial tenant farmers in Co Antrim. But Leonard was a provision merchant in Belfast. His mother was said to belong to a family “for generations adherents of the Orange and Protestant ascendancy party in Ulster”.

John Ferguson’s father died early. His mother then removed from Belfast where he and his sister Margaret had been born around 1835-7 in Glenavy, Co Antrim. Her father had much land around the shores of Lough Neagh. It was here Ferguson received his earliest education in a little school in Crumlin, Co Antrim. He was well grounded in history, ancient and modern, but his teacher “altogether left Irish history out of the course, it being an extremely dangerous subject for a loyal young Protestant and conservative”.

When he left school he was apprenticed to Phillips, a Belfast printer.

From an early age he showed an enquiring mind, a voracious reading capacity and a disciplined approach to study.

After work, a night was given in each week to study of a particular subject, such as history, French, German, which he spoke fluently, English literature and commercial arithmetic.

His business with Phillips required travelling to London and he attended some great Reform meetings there. More often he visited Scotland and he settled there in 1860. In 1862, he married Miss Ochiltree of Market Hill, Co Armagh, described as a lady of high culture and well-rounded education. He became a partner and the principal in the large printing business of Cameron and Ferguson on the death of Cameron.

Then came a virtual Damascus Road conversion for Ferguson, it is claimed. Mere chance caused him to enter the Eclectic Hall in Glasgow, where as the name would suggest, a variety of subjects were debated. That evening it was “Ireland and Popery”. Scottish Protestants were assailing emigrant Irish, presumably. Ferguson felt constrained to side with the Irish. After, he acknowledged a sense of defeat because he was so ill-informed about his native country. He had been in the country but not of it.

Ferguson’s upbringing and his later commitment to Irish nationalism contrast markedly. A subliminal factor may have emerged. For Ferguson’s grandfather was a near relative of Willie Orr, a tenant farmer and a moderate United Irishman who, though believed innocent, was hanged at Carrickfergus on October 14th, 1797, for allegedly administering a seditious oath to two soldiers. Radical opinion in the north was outraged. “Remember Orr” was for a long time a watchword there.

Ferguson was prominent in the Home Government Association (1870) and the Home Rule League (1873), ever forthright, persistent, a strategist seeking to shape policy. He was not a Fenian but there is a hint that he could come to the point of militarism. He founded Home Rule in Scotland and was a principal in the founding of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain. In his capacity as vice-president and chairman he travelled extensively in Great Britain. He encouraged Joseph Gillis Biggar to found a Home Government Association in Belfast and to stand for election in Derry in 1872, when as a Home Rule candidate he was defeated. But the experience prompted a start in the direction of a parliamentary career for Biggar, and success in Cavan in 1874, which was to be of such importance for the fledgling Irish Parliamentary Party. He supported the Land War and the Land League unreservedly.

Ferguson was an intimate of Butts though disillusioned with him. He was chief among those in seeing in Parnell as a leader and in promoting him eventually.

After the O’Shea-Parnell divorce case and the split in the party (1890), Ferguson, who probably had sympathy for Parnell, devoted himself more to municipal politics. He had a remarkable career as Glasgow town councillor and baillie (magistrate) while still in some measure promoting the Irish cause.

His death was precipitated at the age of 71 by a fall when boarding a tram car while canvassing for the Liberal-Labour cause.

This staunchest of Presbyterians was buried in a grave at Kirkintilloch. It was a “quiet funeral” at the request of the family and not the public one much requested on both sides of the water. A keynote of the cleric’s address was “honest John Ferguson”.