Diplomat scientist Confederate soldier
Thomas Barker Ferguson was born in Berkeley County, near Charleston, South Carolina, the son of James and Abby Ann (Barker) Ferguson. His great-grandfather, James Ferguson, came to Charleston from Scotland late in the seventeenth century, and his grandfather, Thomas Ferguson, was prominent in state politics during the Revolution.
After attending elementary schools in Charleston, Thomas Barker Ferguson went to the state Military Academy, where he graduated in 1861 and immediately entered the Confederate service as a cadet engineer.
With his classmates he helped construct and operate a battery on Morris Island which prevented the U. S. S. Star of the West from relieving Fort Sumter in April 1861. Serving throughout the Civil War, he rose to the rank of major before he was twenty-five.
While in command of the artillery of Walker’s division of Johnston’s army at Jackson, Mississippi, in 1863, he was shot through the lungs, but recovered in time to become before the end of the war commander of the First Military District, which included South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
He organized the Maryland State Fish Commission in 1870 and long served as a member. After acting as judge of awards for the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, he was sent as assistant commissioner of the United States to the Paris Exposition of 1878.
In February 1894 he was appointed by President Cleveland minister to Sweden and Norway. After spending four uneventful years in Stockholm, he returned to the United States and lived in Washington, D. C. Devoting himself to inventing, he produced an improved coffee pot and the Cadmus, both patented in 1903.
The latter was a copy book for beginning students in writing and forced the pupil to follow the example instead of copying his own errors.
He died while visiting his daughter in Boston, Massachusetts. A prominent clubman with a wide circle of friends, Ferguson performed valuable services through his researches in fish propagation.
Appointed on his return as assistant commissioner of fish and fisheries of the United States, he served until 1887, inventing meanwhile many improvements in the apparatus used for incubating fish eggs. He published in 1880 a monograph on pisciculture (in Vol. V of the Reports of the United States Commission to the Paris Exposition, 1878) which set forth his many discoveries in that field.
He organized the Maryland State Fish Commission in 1870 and long served as a member.
In 1867 he moved to Baltimore and married Jane Byrd, daughter of Governor Thomas Swann of Maryland.
