From Quartermaster-Sergeant, to Quartermaster, 12 April, 1864. Died, 27 September, 1871.
PATRICK FERGUSON.
Cornet in the Lieutenant-Colonel's troop, in the Muster signed at Kelso, 13 August, 1763. In Muster Roll ending 26 December, 1768, promoted to be a Lieutenant in the 70th Regiment. Born in 1744, his father being James Ferguson of Pitfours, Aberdeenshire. He was taught fortification, gunnery, &c., in a military academy in London, and in 1759, before he was 15, was appointed a Cornet in the Greys. On 2nd December, 1776, he obtained a patent for improvements in Fire-arms. The patent covers several forms of breech action, the use of sliding back sights, and also a peculiar mode of rifling. After some successful public experiments at Woolwich, and before the King at Windsor, the inventor returned to his regiment, then quartered at Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was allowed to form a corps of riflemen with volunteers from regiments in America. The men were armed with breech-loading rifled carbines. This corps of riflemen, extended in front and supported by a corps of rangers, did good service in covering General Knyphausen's advance at the Battle of Brandywine, 11 September, 1777, when Ferguson received a severe wound. 26 October, 1779, he was made Major in the old 71st Highlanders, then in America. In Carolina under Lord Cornwallis, he was again wounded severely. At the fight of King's Mountain, on 9 October, 1780, he was surprised and killed. The D. N. B. concludes: "Ferguson is allowed by all to have been a generous, chivalrous soldier, but the partisan warfare in which he was engaged gave rise to rancorous feelings on both sides. It is alleged that indignities were offered to his mangled corpse and great barbarities practised on the wretched militiamen under him who were taken prisoners. Unable to show other marks of respect to his memory, Ferguson's brother officers published a notice of him in the form of a monumental epitaph in the New York Gazette, 14 February, 1781."
PETER FERGUISON.
Cornet in November, 1760.
TOWNLEY PATTEN HUME MACARTNEY FILGATE.
Captain, 28 April, 1863, by exchange from 8th Hussars. Retired, 14 February, 1865.
CONRAD WILLIAM CURLING FINZELL.