James Ferguson

Life Story

James Ferguson was born about 1821 or 1822 in Tennessee, probably in Rhea County, into the Ferguson-Falls family that later spread west into Missouri and Kansas. Robert Ferguson’s estate proceedings identify James Ferguson and Levi or Lea Ferguson among the heirs of Robert Ferguson deceased, establishing James as part of the same sibling group as Levi Ferguson, Sarah Ferguson, Elizabeth Ferguson, and Ranzy Jane Ferguson.¹

By 1850, James had moved west to Madison Township, Johnson County, Missouri. The census recorded him as a twenty-eight-year-old Tennessee-born farmer living alone, with real estate valued at $600. The record places him in the Missouri community that later became important to both the Ferguson and Hornsby families.²

James’s connection to the Hornsby family was not just social. In 1856, James Ferguson and Horace Hornsby received a federal land patent for forty acres in Johnson County, Missouri. Horace Hornsby was a son of Brinkley Hornsby and Esther Falls Hornsby, tying the land record into the wider Falls-Hornsby-Ferguson family network.³

In 1860, James was still in Madison Township. His household included Robert H. Furguson, age seven, born in Missouri. The census does not state a relationship, but later records identify Robert H. Ferguson as Levi Ferguson’s son. This makes the 1860 household an important clue to how Levi’s children were cared for within the wider Ferguson kin network after Rachel Collins Ferguson disappeared from the records.⁴

James also appears in records involving his younger sister Elizabeth Ferguson. In 1853, Elizabeth, then over age fourteen, chose James Ferguson as guardian of her estate in Johnson County, Missouri, with John C. Ferguson as security. The record should not be used to claim that Robert Ferguson was dead in 1853, since Robert was still living in Rhea County, Tennessee, until 1860. Instead, it shows Elizabeth’s presence in Missouri and James’s role as a trusted older brother or kin guardian.⁵

By 1865, James Ferguson was in Wakarusa Township, Douglas County, Kansas, with Sarah Ferguson, establishing the couple together by that year. Their Kansas residence also helps explain the birthplace of their son Horace, who was recorded as born in Kansas in the 1870 census. By 1870, James and Sarah were back in Johnson County, Missouri, where their household included Horace, age five, born in Kansas; Sophia B., age three, born in Missouri; and Mary R., an infant, born in Missouri. Taken together, the 1865 and 1870 census records support Sarah as James’s wife and Horace, Sophia, and Mary as their children.^{6, 7}

James remained closely associated with the Hornsby community. In 1872, Brinkley Hornsby and Attelia W. Hornsby conveyed land for a public graveyard to trustees including James Ferguson, Samuel P. Sisk, Thomas N. Webb, Leonidas Hornsby, and Thomas A. Conrad. The deed places James among the men trusted to organize and maintain a local burying ground, a small but useful sign of his standing in the Johnson County neighborhood.⁸

James had died by the time his estate records were being settled in the 1870s. His probate papers included a note for $75 owed by Levi Ferguson, dated 2 August 1869, which had grown with interest by 1876. That debt does not prove the nature of the brothers’ relationship by itself, but it is another record tying James and Levi together after their westward migration from Tennessee.⁹

James Ferguson’s surviving records do not yet give a full domestic biography, but the combined 1865 and 1870 census evidence now supports a basic family group. His value to the public family history is also broader: he helps connect Robert Ferguson’s Tennessee family to the Missouri branch of the Ferguson-Hornsby network and helps explain why Levi Ferguson’s son Robert H. Ferguson was living in Johnson County, Missouri, in 1860.