John Ferguson – A Dalmuir Boy who Lived the Dream

It started with a post!

I love it when a chance comment or article leads to the discovery of another story of a boy who lived the dream by pulling on those famous Hoops. In this case it was a Facebook post back on 18 October, on the Celtic Pics and Videos page.

“My Grandfather played with Celtic and Belfast Celtic around 1926/27. My dad had this scanned and enhanced photograph, but we are desperate to find an original copy. My Grandfather’s name was John Ferguson if anyone is able to help?”

I didn’t pick up the original Facebook post. The first I saw of this was a Twitter post from my good friend Jamie Fox on my timeline a few days later, and my OCD as always swayed me to correct the names in the captions. As it turned out, Jamie had already done that on Facebook!

Anyway, the real source of interest to me was the name John Ferguson, as I had found a few references to him as J.A. Ferguson and Jack Ferguson whilst researching my books on Celtic in the Thirties. I spent quite a bit of time back then trying to get further details on his career, which were fairly scarce. Anyway, I did find out that he had moved to Celtic from Scottish Junior Cup winners Maryhill Hibernian in the summer of 1929, and that he had played just once for the Celtic first team before moving on. He does not appear in the traditional reference books or sites to the best of my knowledge, but he is very much part of the Celtic Story. Time to do something about that.

At my desk, I still had a copy of a wonderful photo of Celtic’s Second XI from 1930 which featured John Ferguson, and which had been passed to me from the grandfather of former Celtic trainer Will Quinn a few months back, sadly too late for inclusion in the book. We shared the photo with John’s granddaughter, one thing led to another, and I offered to see what else I could find out if she could give me some basic family information. One death certificate later, we’re underway. That highlighted a key issue. John’s name had always been stated in both Press reports and Celtic’s official handbook as J. A. Ferguson, but that was incorrect. His name was John Edward Ferguson.

Well, it’s taken a couple of weeks, but I now have a better picture I believe of John’s career, and to a lesser extent his life.

John Edward Ferguson was born at 5am on Friday, 28 September 1906 at 37 Buchanan Street, Dalmuir. His parents were Edward and Mary Ferguson, nee Millar, who married on Wednesday, 10 June 1903 in Stonehouse, Lanarkshire.

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