Sir Samuel Ferguson (10 March 1810 – 9 August 1886) was an Irish poet, barrister, antiquarian, artist and public servant.

[3] His father was a spendthrift and his mother was a conversationalist and lover of literature, who read out the works of Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Keats, Shelley and other English-language authors to her six children.

Ferguson lived at a number of addresses, including Glenwhirry, where he later said he acquired a love of nature that inspired his works.

These studies were important to his major antiquarian work, Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, which was edited after his death by his widow and published in 1887.

In 1882, he was elected president of the Royal Irish Academy,[5] an organisation dedicated to the advancement of science, literature and antiquarian studies.