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Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson 1865-1951
THE death, on 7th April, 1951, of Sir Thomas Colyer Colyer-Fergusson,
Bart., F.S.A., of Ightham Mote, has closed a long and valued association
with the Kent Archaeological Society. He became a life member on'
election, in 1889, and was Honorary Treasurer in 1903-4. After resigning
that office, he served as an elected member of the Council in 1946, when he
was appointed a Vice-President of the Society, which office he retained till
the end of his life. He was also a member of several other learned
Societies, antiquarian and genealogical.
Sir Thomas was most widely known as the owner of the charming moated house
in which he dwelt for over sixty years from 1889, when he purchased the Mote
estate from the representatives of the ancient family of Selby. He was High
Sheriff of Kent in 1905-6, a Warden. of Rochester Bridge, and in addition to
other activities he held many other voluntary offices. He had an unusually
wide circle of friends and acquaintances, was an ideal host and whilst
playing his full part in the normal life of a country gentleman, he was
perhaps happiest, at least during his later years, when working quietly in
his fine old library at the Mote, well-stocked with Kent books, or when
discussing an
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archaeological subject with a kindred spirit. And be it noted to his honour
that the years that he devoted so assiduously to genealogical work and
his sustained industry have provided .him with a lasting memorial in
his transcripts of parish registers.
The problems that he met with in his genealogical researches,
entailing as they did the exhaustive examination of ancient registers, often
written in script difficult to decipher and seldom, if ever, indexed,
suggested to him the preparation of typed, indexed copies in which surnames
could be traced in a moment. He carried this idea into such effect that
during the last forty years of his life he made and indexed copies in
triplicate of the registers of nearly sixty parishes in the Diocese of
Rochester, presenting one copy to the incumbent, another to the Society of
Genealogists, and retaining the third copy himself. By this persistent work
he has earned the gratitude of many people of Kentish descent who come, year
by year, from all over the world to trace their ancestry.
Sir Thomas published in Archaeologia Cantiana (XXVII,
p. 31) a pedigree of "Selby of Ightham Mote," and in
collaboration with continued
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