Sarah Ferguson Family History

Sarah Margaret Ferguson (Fergie) was born on October 15th, 1959 to Ronald and Susan Ferguson in London.  She was the younger of their two daughters.  She grew up first in Berkshire and then, when she was ten, at the family farm at Dummer in Hampshire.

Soon, however, her parents’ marriage began to dissolve due to infidelities.  When she was a teenager her mother went off to live with her polo-playing boyfriend in Argentina, her father obsessed himself with polo, and her elder sister Jane fled the scene and moved to Australia.  She herself felt abandoned, thought that life was pointless, and developed eating disorders.

She moved to London at eighteen, working at a number of jobs. Not surprisingly she sought the company of an older man Paddy McNally, a motor racing manager who was more than twenty years her senior.

Yet her family’s connection with the Royal Family through polo would work to Sarah’s advantage.  She started dating the Queen’s second son Andrew in 1985 and was considered a marriage prospect.

Duchess of York.  At the marriage of Andrew and Sarah in July 1986 the Queen invested them with the titles of Duke and Duchess of York.  The wedding itself at Westminster Abbey was a hugely popular event.  Andrew was still a national hero from his Falklands helicopter flying days; while Sarah with her friendly manner and lively spirit was seen a breath of fresh air for a rather staid Royal Family.

But the public romance did not last long.  The marriage came under strain.  Sarah was seen with the Texan millionaire Steve Wyatt and later, in compromising pictures captured by a papparazzi, with her financial advisor John Bryan.  The couple announced their separation in 1992.

Post-Marriage.  The couple formally divorced in 1996.  Sarah did retain a friendly relationship with Andrew after the divorce.

Indeed, although they lived separate lives, they were to share a home, first at Sunninghill Park in Berkshire and then at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park until their eventual ouster there in 2025.  And Sarah continued to use her title of Duchess of York in her post-marriage life.

She had her charities to support.  She also had her business interests, primarily in book publishing.  There were her Budgie the Little Helicopter series for children and her historical works about Queen Victoria.  She also made money from film production and from personal appearances.  And she would charge if she could make personal introductions.

However, the money made was not enough.  She had an extravagant lifestyle, not watching the money going out, and was repeatedly in debt.  She begged and borrowed.  All this came to light in 2026 when the released Epstein files revealed the extent of her relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Her former husband Andrew, similarly positioned, was stripped of his position and titles.  She herself  lost her home, charity support, and remaining reputation with the public.

Country Gentry with a Bit of Old Money

Sarah described her ancestry as “country gentry with a bit of old money.”  But it also featured aristocratic roots and royal connections.  Sarah added: “My family tree claimed its quota of blue blood, with four dukes and at least three mistresses of Charles the Second.”

Her family was indeed known in upper-class aristocratic British society.  But it was her father’s role as polo manager for the Royal Family that brought her closer to their circle.

The Ferguson Line

These Fergusons were originally Scots Irish.  The story goes that there were two Ferguson brothers from Scotland, Andrew and Victor, who were officers in Ireland in the army of William of Orange.  Andrew settled in Derry and Victor in Antrim.

The first Antrim record appears to have been John Ferguson, born around 1680, who lived in Belfast.

It was his descendant Thomas Ferguson who first made the move to England sometime in the 1820’s, marrying his wife Emma in Leeds in 1827.  They lived in Antrim for a while before returning to England permanently in the 1840’s.

The line from Thomas in England ran as follows:

• Colonel John Ferguson (1834-1885) m. Sophia Holford
• Brigadier General Algernon Ferguson (1867-1943) m. Margaret Brand
• Colonel Andrew Ferguson (1899-1966) m. Marian Montague Douglas Scott
• and Major Ronald Ferguson (1931-2003) m. Susan Wright and Susan Deptford.

Military Men.  These descendants of Thomas Ferguson were all military men.  His son John fought in the Crimean War and was the first of these Fergusons to join the Coldstream 2nd Life Guards.  He died while in command of his regiment in 1885.

John’s son Algernon attended Eton and Sandhurst before enlisting in the 2nd Life Guards.

He fought in the Boer War and World War One, rising to the level of Brigadier General.  While still a Major, he acquired Polebrook Hall near Oundle in Northamptonshire as his family home.

His eldest son Victor was his pride and joy.  He was awarded the Prize Cadetship at the Royal Military College in 1916.  Sadly he was to be killed in action on the Western Front in August 1918.

His second son Andrew was given command of the Life Guards in 1940 and fought in World War Two.  He had acquired a 480-acre farm at Dummer in Hampshire in 1939.  He lived there and at his London home by Regent’s Park until his death from leukemia in 1966.

Gentleman Farmers.  Sarah described her Ferguson forebears not as military men but as gentlemen farmers.  It is true that her father Ronald had a military career of nearly twenty years, serving in Aden and Cyprus.

But he had his Hampshire farm as well  There he had cows and horses and several fields of crops.  He also rode polo ponies for forty-two years; and was the polo manager for both Prince Philip and Prince Charles’s horses.

Ronald died in 2003 at the age of seventy-one.  An obituarist at the time noted:

“He sustained the popular entertainment through his connections with polo and massage parlours.  He might have been happier in an earlier era which showed more respect for toffs and less prurient tabloid interest in their private lives and failings.”

Ferguson Wives

The Fergusons were military men who achieved success in Victorian England.  This enabled them to mix and marry at the higher echelons of English society.  Three of their wives here:

• Margaret Ferguson nee Brand (1873-1948)
• Marian Ferguson nee Montague Douglas Scott (1908-1996)
• and Susan Ferguson nee Wright (1937-1998)

provided the spice which Sarah found most interesting in her family history.

Margaret Brand.  She had married Sarah’s great grandfather Algernon Ferguson in 1897.  Her parents were Henry Brand and Susan Cavendish from the Duke of Devonshire family.

The Brands were a Hertfordshire landowning family and local MP’s elevated to the peerage as Viscount Hampden.  Margaret’s father Henry was Governor of New South Wales from 1895 to 1899.  His future son-in-law Algernon served as his Private Secretary at that time.

These Brands knew the Buccleuths well.  Henry’s eldest son Thomas, who became Viscount Hampden on Henry’s death in 1906, married Katharine Montague Douglas Scott of the Buccleuths in 1899.

Marian Montague Douglas Scott.  She had married Sarah’s grandfather Colonel Andrew Ferguson in 1927.  Her parents were Herbert Montagu Douglas Scott and Marie Edwards.

Herbert was the fourth son of the 6th Duke of Buccleuch and a direct descendant of James Scott, the illegitimate son of Charles II and his mistress Lucy Walter back in the 17th century.

The Buccleuchs had been close to the Royal Family in Victorian times.  Marian was first cousin to Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott, the woman who married Prince Henry the Duke of Gloucester.  And there was also Lady Margaret Montague Douglas Scott who went travelling in the 1860’s and whose life was depicted in Sarah’s book  Her Heart for a Compass.

Susan Wright.  She had married Sarah’s father Major Ronald Ferguson in 1956, although they divorced in 1974.  Her parents were FitzHerbert Wright and Doreen Wingfield from a prominent Anglo-Irish family.

The Wrights had been a landowning family based in the Midland counties of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.  Ichabod Wright was a wealthy 18th century Nottingham banker.  His descendents John Wright and son Francis were early industrialists, involving themselves in coal and iron ore production in neighboring Derbyshire.

FitzHerbert Wright, Susan’s father, was a director in their Butterley Company.

The Wingfields, descended from the medieval noble House of Stratford, were early arrivals in Ireland in 1603.  As Viscounts Powerscourt they became one of the largest landowners in county Wicklow.  They built the renowned 18th-century Powerscourt House with its extensive gardens near Enniskerry which they held until 1961.

Mervyn Wingfield, the 8th Viscount Powerscourt, was active in the Boy Scouts movement in Ireland.  He was the father of Doreen Wingfield who married FitzHerbert Wright.

Susan Wright, born in Nottinghamshire in 1937, was the youngest of the four children of FitzHerbert and Doreen Wright.  She was a 1954 debutante in one of the last years that debutantes were presented to the Queen.  Two years later she married Ronald Ferguson, then a Lieutenant in the British Army.

The marriage did not last, due to infidelities on both sides.

In 1972 Susan caused a stir in society circles by leaving her family to move to Argentina with the professional polo player Héctor Barrantes.  During her time there she remained firm friends with Prince Charles who contributed a foreword to her book Polo.  She died in Argentina in 1998 at the age of sixty-one after a fatal car crash.

 

Sarah Ferguson’s Family Tree

• Thomas Ferguson from Greenville in county Down, Ireland (1795-1859) m. Emma Benyon (1802-1860) in Leeds in 1827 and returned to Ulster for a while
• – Emma Ferguson (1832-1866)
• – John Ferguson (1834-1885)
• – Thomas Ferguson (1837-1874) m. Emma Cary, died at sea when returning from India
• – Emily Ferguson (b. 1842) m. Hon. Fleetwood Pellew

• Colonel Andrew Ferguson m. Marian Montague Douglas Scott (1908-1996) in London in 1927
• – John Ferguson (1929-1939), died of peritonitis
• – Ronald Ferguson (1931-2003)

• Sarah (Fergie) Ferguson m. Prince Andrew, Duke of York (b. 1960) in Westminster Abbey in 1986, divorced in 1996
• – Princess Beatrice (b. 1988) m. property developer Edouardo Mozzi (b. 1983) in 2020
• – Princess Eugenie (b. 1990) m. marketing executive Jack Brooksbank (b. 1986) in 2018