Early Life
Patrick Ferguson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 25 May (Old Style)/4 June (New Style) 1744, the second son and fourth child of advocate James Ferguson of Pitfour (who was raised to the judges' bench as a Senator of the College of Justice, so known as Lord Pitfour after 1764) and his wife Anne Murray, a sister of the literary patron Patrick Murray, 5th Lord Elibank.
Through his parents, he knew a number of major figures in the Scottish Enlightenment, including philosopher and historian David Hume, on whose recommendation he read Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa when he was fifteen, and the dramatist John Home. He had numerous first cousins through his mother's family: these included Sir William Pulteney, 5th Baronet, Commodore George Johnstone, and Sir James Murray (later Murray-Pulteney).
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