James Ferguson (August 31, 1797 – September 26, 1867) was a Scottish-born American astronomer and engineer, who made the first discovery of an asteroid from North America (31 Euphrosyne).

[1] James Ferguson was born in Scotland on August 31, 1797, and his family moved to the United states in 1800.

Afterwards he was appointed as an astronomical surveyor, surveying the U.S. Northwest boarder as part of the Treaty of Ghent[2] Starting in 1847, he worked at the U.S.

[6] In 1850, he "lost" a star that he had been observing, which Lt. Matthew Maury, the superintendent of the Observatory, claimed was evidence for a 9th planet (Pluto had not yet been discovered).

In 1878, however, CHF Peters, director of the Hamilton College Observatory in New York, showed that the star had not in fact vanished, and that the previous results had been due to human error.