Early Life
Thomas Fergus was born in Ayr Scotland on 6 April 1850. There is some question as to the Hon Thomas Fergus' date of birth as the NZ Government records are two years different from this birth record, and his newspaper obituary gives 1851 as the birth year.
His father was also Thomas Fergus. It is uncertain when his father was born as there is no birth certificate to coincide with the date of 1815, however there is record of him in both 1851 and 1861 census for Scotland, and the age in those suggest that his birth was in fact in 1807. His mother Annie McGechin is also found in census records but no birth certificate has been found to verify her date of birth, although the census suggests her date of birth to be in 1810. In the 1851 census for Scotland the household included his paternal grandmother Elizabeth Fergus. The family is registered as living in Gordon Place, St Quivox, Ayr at the time of the 1861 Census for Scotland and included seven surviving children (Elizabeth, Thomas, Martha Grange, Robert, John, Ann, Margaret). He was the second to eldest and the eldest son.
He initially travelled to Melbourne on the Esmerelda in the early 1860s. It is thought that he may have travelled with two sister and a brother, although this needs to be verified. He later travelled on to New Zealand in 1869. He was educated in both Melbourne and at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand from 1872 to 1876 and worked as a civil engineer.
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