Biography

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland to a lawyer father, Patrick Ferguson joined the British military and fought in Canada during the French & Indian War. He returned to England to study at the Royal Military Academy and served briefly in Germany before a leg problem sidelined him, which resulted in lifelong arthritis. He later invented a rifle that could be loaded from the back of the barrel. (Highly praised, some were used during the Revolution, but the design was too expensive to produce in large numbers.)

As a captain at the 1777 Battle of Brandywine (Penn.), marksman Ferguson gave up a clear shot at an officer because “it was not pleasant to fire at the back of an inoffending individual, who was acquitting himself very coolly of his duty…”[1] The officer turned out almost certainly to be