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Major Patrick Ferguson (1744 – 7 October 1780) was a British Army officer who designed the Ferguson rifle.He is best known for his service in the 1780 military campaign of Charles Cornwallis during the American Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, in which he played a great effort in recruiting American Loyalists to serve in his militia against the Patriots.
The Ferguson rifle was one of the first breech-loading rifles to be put into service by the British military. It was designed by Major Patrick Ferguson (1744–1780). It fired a standard British carbine ball of .615" calibre and was used by the British Army in the American Revolutionary War at the Battle of Brandywine in 1777, and possibly at the Siege of Charleston in 1780.
British Major Patrick Ferguson was appointed Inspector of Militia on May 22, 1780. His task was to march to the old Tryon County area, raise and organize Loyalist units from the Tory population of the Carolina backcountry, and protect the left flank of Lord Cornwallis' main body at Charlotte, North Carolina.
The Loyalist "American Volunteers", were led by British Army commander, Major Patrick Ferguson, into the 1780 Battle of Kings Mountain, in which, Ferguson was shot dead, from his horse, by Patriot "Overmountain Men" and the American Volunteers were virtually annihilated, as a fighting force, in the most disastrous, British-Loyalist defeat, of ...
[28] Another leader of Loyalists, the Scotsman Patrick Ferguson, commanded a force called the American Volunteers, who formed part of the army which took Charleston. [29] Now the civil war in the South widened. The British Legion, often called Tarleton's Legion after its commander, was a force consisting, at first, mostly of Pennsylvanians.
British Army officer Captain Patrick Ferguson led a raid on Chestnut Neck, on the Mullica River, to retrieve supplies taken by privateers and try to stop their use of the town as a base for the distribution of their prizes and shipment of captured goods to General Washington at Valley Forge.
The British army also conducted limited experimental use of the breech-loading Ferguson Rifle, which proved too difficult to mass-produce to be used more extensively. Major Patrick Ferguson formed a small experimental company of riflemen armed with this weapon, but this was disbanded in 1778. [69]
On 7 October 1780, at the Battle of Kings Mountain, South Carolina, soldiers of the Continental Army, having heard of the slaughter at Waxhaw Creek, killed American Loyalists who had surrendered after a sniper killed their British commanding officer, Maj. Patrick Ferguson. [15]