10 March 1810: Birth of Samuel Ferguson, Irish Poet

Samuel Ferguson, poet, antiquarian, barrister and archivist, was born in Belfast on 10 March 1810. He was the youngest of the six children of John and Agnes Ferguson. His father’s family had lived in Ulster since the seventeenth century but their property in county Antrim did not provide them much towards the children’s education.

Ferguson attended the Belfast Academical Institution where he became interested in Irish language poetry and the history and myths of Ireland. He began publishing his own poetry in 1830 with contributions to the Ulster Magazine. Regular contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine started in 1832 with his poem The Forging of the Anchor, and he was an early contributor for the new Dublin University Magazine from 1833.

These publications provided Ferguson with an income during his student years. He studied law as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, but illness in 1834 prevented him from graduating. After resuming his studies at King’s Inns, Dublin in 1836, he was called to the bar in Ireland in 1838.

His career as a barrister left him with less time for writing, but Ferguson published poetry in anthologies such as The Ballad Poetry of Ireland in 1845. Following further illness in 1846, and the death of his father, Ferguson travelled through Europe for almost a year visiting sites of archaeological interest, libraries and museums.

After his return to Ireland Ferguson became involved with nationalism, founding the Protestant Repeal Movement which campaigned for the repeal of the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland. His political lobbying ended with his marriage to Mary Guinness on 16 August 1848.

In 1865 Ferguson published his first book, Lays of the Ancient Gael and Other Poems, and was awarded an honorary LLD by Trinity College, Dublin. The epic poem Congal that Ferguson had been working on for thirty years was published in 1872 and a third book, Poems, appeared in 1880.

As deputy keeper of the records in Ireland from 1867, Ferguson was responsible for bringing together documents from parishes around Ireland to be stored in the Public Records Office at the Four Courts in Dublin. A fire during the 1922 civil war destroyed a large proportion of this central store of documents.

His work in the archives was rewarded in 1878 when he was knighted for his services. Another honorary LLD in 1884, this time from the University of Edinburgh, recognised his antiquarian work with the Royal Irish Academy, where his interest lay in ogham stone inscriptions. He had been president of the Academy since 1881.

But by this time his health was failing and, on 9 August 1886, Samuel Ferguson died of heart failure in Howth, near Dublin. He was buried at Donegore in county Antrim.

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